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THE ADVENTURES

OF

OLIVER TWIST

AND

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

£^c^^^

^-^ gi/?z^ <:^u/ij^e^

THE ADVENTURES

OF

OLIVER TWIST

AND

A TALE OF TWO CITIES.

BY

CHARLES DICKENS.

WITH FORTY ILLUSTRATIONS

BV

GEORGE CRUIK8HANK AND PHIZ.

LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, ld

V ufl.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

OLIVER TWIST.

P^GB

BosE Maylie and Oliver Frontispiece

Olives Asklsg fob Mobe 16

„ Escapes bbisq Bound Apprentice to a Sweep ... 23

„ Plucks up a Spirit . .40

^ Introduced to the Respectable Old Gentleman . . 52

„ Amazed at the Dodger's Mode op "Going to Work" . . 60

„ Recovering from the Fever 71

„ Claimed by his Affectionate Friends 93

Oliver's Reception by Fagin and the Boys ..... 96
Master Bates Explains a Professional Technicality . . .113

The Burglary 137

Mb. Bumble and Mrs. Corney Taking Tea 141

]Mr. Claypole as he Appeared when his Master was Out . . 166

Oliver Twist at Mrs. Maylie's Door 173

Oliver Waited ox by the Bow Street Runners .... 189

Monks and the Jew 211

Mr. Bumble Degraded in the Eyes of the Paupers . . . 223

The Evidence Destroyed 234

Mr. Fagin and his Pupil Recovering Nancy .... 237

The Jew and Morris Bolter Begin to Understand each Other . 263

The Meeting 284

Sikes Attempting to Destroy his Dog 301

The Last Chance 317

Fagin in the Condemned Cell . 329

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES.

PAGE

Fbontispiece and Vignette

The Mail <...... 846

The Shoemaker 872

The Likeness 393

congbatclations * - . . 397

The Stoppage at the Fountain ....... 420

Me. Stbyveb at Tellson's Bank 446

The Spy's Funekal 455

The Wine-Shop ... * '.462

The Accomplices » , . . . 492

TuE Sea Bises 506

Before the Prison Tbibgnal 528

The Knock at the Doob ........ 559

The Double Eeoognition 561

AxTEB THE Sentence s . . 592

OLIVER TWIST,

^^y

PREFACE.

Once upon a time it was held to be a coarse and shocking circum-
stance, that some of the characters in these pages are chosen from the
most criminal and degraded of London's population.

As I saw no reason, when I wrote this book, why the dregs of life
(so long as their speech did not offend the ear) should not serve the
purpose of a moral, as well as its froth and cream, I made bold to
believe that this same Once upon a time would not prove to be All-
time or even a long time. I saw many strong reasons for pursuing
my course. I had read of thieves by scores ; seductive fellows
(amiable for the most part), faultless in dress, plump in pocket, choice
in horseflesh, bold in bearing, fortunate in gallantry, great at a song,
a bottle, pack of cards or dice-box, and fit companions for the bravest.
But I had never met (except in Hogarth) with the miserable reality.
It appeared to me that to draw a knot of such associates in crime as
really did exist; to paint them in all their deformity, in all their
wretchedness, in all the squalid misery of their lives ; to show them
as they really were, for ever skulking uneasily through the dirtiest
paths of life, with the great black ghastly gallows closing up their
prospect, turn them where they might ; it appeared to me that to do
this, woidd be to attempt a something which was needed, and which
would be a service to society. And I did it as I best could.

In every book I know, where such characters are treated of, allure-
ments and fascinations are thrown around them. Even in the Beggar's
Opera, the thieves are represented as leading a life which is rather to

4 Preface.

be envied tlian otherwise : while Macheath, with all the captivations
of command, and the devotion of the most beautiful girl and only
pure character in the piece, is as much to be admired and emulated
by weak beholders, as any fine gentleman in a red coat who has
purchased, as Voltaibe says, the right to command a couple of
thousand men, or so, and to affront death at their head. Johnson's
question, whether any man will turn thief because Macheath is
reprieved, seems to me beside the matter. I ask myself, whether any
man will be deterred from turning thief, because of Macheath's being
sentenced to death, and because of the existence of Peachum and
Lockit ; and remembering the captain's roaring life, great appearance,
vast success, and strong advantages, I feel assured that nobody having
a bent that way will take any warning from him, or will see anything
in the play but a flowery and pleasant road, conducting an honourable
ambition — in course of time — to Tyburn Tree.

In fact, Gay's witty satire on society had a general object, which
made him quite regardless of example in this respect, and gave him
other and wider aims. The same may be said of Sir Edward Bulwer's
admirable and powerful novel of Paul Clifford, which cannot be fairly
considered as having, or as being intended to have, any bearing on
this part of the subject, one way or other.

What manner of life is that which is described in these pages, as
the everyday existence of a Thief? What charms has it for the young
and ill-disposed, what allurements for the most jolter-headed of
juveniles ? Here are no canterings on moonlit heaths, no merry-
makings in the snuggest of all possible caverns, none of the attractions
of dress, no embroidery, no lace, no jack-boots, no crimson coats and
ruffles, none of the dash and freedom with which " the road " has been
time out of mind invested. The cold wet shelterless midnight streets
of London ; the foul and frowsy dens, where vice is closely packed
and lacks the room to turn ; the haunts of hunger and disease ; the
shabby rags that scarcely hold together; where arc the attractions
of these things ?

There are people, however, of so refined and delicate a nature, that
they cannot bear the contemplation of such horrors. Not that they
turn instinctively from crime; but that criminal characters, to suit

Preface, 5

them, must be, like their meat, in delicate disguise. A Massaroni in
grcou velvet is an enchanting creature ; but a Sikes in fustian is in-
supportable. A Mrs. Massaroni, being a lady in short petticoats and
a fancy dress, is a thing to imitate in tableaux and have in lithograph
on pretty songs ; but a Nancy, being a creature in a cotton gown and
cheap shawl, is not bo thought of. It is wonderful how Virtue turns
from dirty stockings ; and how Vice, married to ribbons and a little
gay attire, changes her name, as wedded ladies do, and becomes
Uomance.

But as the stern truth, even in the dress of this (in novels) much
exalted race, was a part of the purpose of this book, I did not, for
these readers, abate one hole in the Dodger's coat, or one scrap of
curl-paper in Nancy's dishevelled hair. I had no faith in the delicacy
which could not bear to look upon them. I had no desire to make
proselytes among such people. I had no respect for their opinion,
good or bad ; did not covet their approval ; and did not write for their
amusement.

It has been observed of Nancy that her devotion to the brutal
housebreaker does not seem natural. And it has been objected to
Sikes in the same breath — with some inconsistency, as I venture to
think— that he is surely overdrawn, because in him there would appear
to bo none of those redeeming traits which are objected to as unnatural
in his mistress. Of the latter objection I will merely remark, that
I fear there are in the world some insensible and callous natures, that
do become utterly and incurably bad. "Whether this be so or not, of
one thing I am certain : that there are such men as Sikes, who, being
closely followed through the same space of time and through the same
current of circumstances, would not give, by the action of a moment,
the faintest indication of a better nature. Whether every gentler
human feeling is dead within such bosoms, or the proper chord to
strike has rusted and is hard to find, I do not pretend to know ; but
that the fact is as I state it, I am sure.

It is useless to discuss whether the conduct and character of the
girl seems natural or unnatural, probable or improbable, right or
wrong. It is true. Every man who has watched these melancho^^
shades of life, must know it to be so. From the first introduction o

6 Preface.

that pool- Avrctoli, to lier laying her blood-staiuod head uj)ou the
robber's breast, there is not a word exaggerated or over-wrought. It
is emphatically God's truth, for it is the truth Ho leaves in such
depraved and miserable breasts; the hope yet lingering there; the
last fair drop of water at the bottom of the weed-choked well. It
involves the best and worst shades of our nature ; much of its ugliest
hues, and something of its most beautiful ; it is a contradiction, an
anomaly, an apparent impossibility ; but it is a truth. I am glad to
have had it doubted, for in that circumstance I should find a sufl&cient
assurance (if I wanted any) that it needed to be told.

In the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty, it was publicly
declared in Loudon by an amazing Alderman, that Jacob's Island did
not exist, and never had existed. Jacob's Island continues to exist
(like an ill-bred place as it is) in the year one thousand eight hundred
and sixty-seven though improved and much changed.

OLIVEK TWIST.

CHAPTER I.

TBBATS OF THE PLACE WHBBB OLIYBB TWIST WAS BORN, AND OF THE
CIRCUMSTANCES ATTENDING HIS BIRTH.

Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many
reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I
will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most
towns, great or small : to wit, a workhouse ; and in this workhouse
was born ; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to
repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader,
in this stage of the business at all events ; the item of moi-tality whose
name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.

For a long time after it was ushered into this world of sorrow and
trouble, by the parish surgeon, it remained a matter of considerable
doubt whether the child would survive to bear any name at all; in
which case it is somewhat more than probable that these memoirs
would never have appeared ; or, if they had, that being comprised
within a couple of pages, they would have possessed the inestimable
merit of being the most concise and faithful specimen of biography,
extant in the literature of any age or country.

Although I am not disposed to maintain that the being bom in a
workhouse, is in itself the most fortunate and enviable circumstance
that can possibly befall a human being, I do mean to say that in this
particular instance, it was the best thing for Oliver Twist that could
by possibility have occurred. The fact is, that there was considerable
difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of respira-
tion,— a troublesome practice, but one which custom has rendered
necessary to our easy existence ; and for some time he lay gasping on
a little flock mattress, rather unequally poised between this world and
the next : the balance being decidedly in favour of the latter. Now,
if, during this brief period, Oliver had been surrounded by careful
grandmothers, anxious aunts, experienced nurses, and doctors of
profound wisdom, he would most inevitably and indubitably have
been killed in no time. There being nobody by, however, but a
pauper old woman, who was rendered rather misty by an unwonted

8 Oliver Twist.

allowance of beer ; and a parish surgeon wlio did such matters by
contract ; Oliver and Nature fought out the point between them.
The result was, that, after a few struggles, Oliver breathed, sneezed,
and proceeded to advertise to the inmates of the workhouse the fact
of a new burden having been imposed upon the parish, by setting up
as loud a cry as could reasonably have been expected from a male
infant who had not been possessed of that very useful appendage, a
voice, for a much longer space of time than three minutes and a
quarter.

As Oliver gave this fii'st proof of the free and proper action of his
lungs, the patchwork coverlet which was carelessly flung over the
iron bedstead, rustled ; the pale face of a young woman was raised
feebly from the pillow ; and a faint voice imperfectly articulated the
words, " Let me see the child, and die."

The surgeon had been sitting with his face turned towards the fire :
giving the palms of his hands a warm and a rub alternately. As the
young woman spoke, he rose, and advancing to the bed's head, said,
with more kindness than might have been expected of him :

" Oh, you must not talk aboiat dying yet."

" Lor bless her dear heart, no ! " interposed the nurse, hastily
depositing in her pocket a green glass bottle, the contents of which
she had been tasting in a corner with evident satisfaction. " Lor
bless her dear heart, when she has lived as long as 1 have, sir, and
had thirteen children of her own, and all on 'em dead except two, and
them in the wurkus with me, she'll know better than to take on in
that way, bless her dear heart ! Think what it is to bo a mother,
there's a dear young lamb, do."

Apparently this consolatory perspective of a mother's prospects
failed in producing its due effect. The patient shook her head, and
stretched out her hand towards the child.

The surgeon deposited it in her arms. She imprinted her cold
white lips passionately on its forehead; passed her hands over her
ftice ; gazed wildly round ; shuddered ; fell back — and died. They
chafed her breast, hands, and temples; but the blood had stopped
for ever. They talked of hope and comfort. They had been strangers
too long.

" It's all over, Mrs. Thingummy 1 " said the surgeon at last.

" Ah, poor dear, so it is ! " said the nurse, picking up the cork of
the green bottle, which had fallen out on the pillow, as she stooped to
take up the child. " Poor dear ! "

"You needn't mind sending up to me, if the child cries, nurse,"
said the surgeon, putting on his gloves with great delibei-ation. " It's
very likely it v^xll be troublesome. Give it a little gruel if it is."
He put on his hat, and, pausing by the bed-side on his way to tho
door, added, " She was a good-looking girl, too ; where did she come
from ? "

" She was bronaht here l^st night;," replied the old woman, " b^ the

Starvation of the Hero. g

overseer's order. She was found lying in the street. She had walked
some distance, for her shoes were worn to pieces ; but where she came
from, or where she was going to, nobody knows."

The surgeon leaned over the body, and raised the left hand. " The
old story," he said, shaking his head : " no wedding-ring, I see. Ah !
Good-night ! "

The medical gentleman walked away to dinner ; and the nurse,
having once more applied herself to the green bottle, sat down on a
low chair before the fire, and proceeded to dress tlie infant.

What an excellent example of the power of dress, young Oliver
Twist was ! Wrapped in the blanket which had hithei-to formed his
only covering, he might have been the child of a nobleman or a
beggar ; it would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have
assigned him his proper station in society. But now that he was
enveloped in the old calico robes which had grown yellow in the same
service, he was badged and ticketed, and fell into his place at once — a
parish child — the orphan of a workhouse — the humble, half-starved
drudge — to be cuffed and buffeted through the world — despised by all,
and pitied by none.

Oliver cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan,
left to the tender mercies of churchwardens and overseers, perhaps he
would have cried the louder.

CHAPTER n.

TREATS OP OLIVER TWIST's GROWTH, EDUCATION, AND BOARD.

Fob the next eight or ten months, Oliver was the victim of a sys-
tematic course of treachery and deception. He was brought up by
hand. The hungry and destitute situation of the infant orphan was
duly reported by the workhouse authorities to the parish authorities.
The parish authorities inquired witli dignity of the workhouse
authorities, whether there was no female then domiciled in "the
house " who was in a situation to impart to Oliver Twist, the consola-
tion and nourishment of which ho stood in need. The workhouse
^authorities replied with humility, that there was not. Upon this, the
parish authorities magnanimously and humanely resolved, that Oliver
should be " farmed," or, in other words, that he shoujd be despatched
to a branch-workhouse some three miles off, where twenty or thirty
other juvenile offenders against the poor-laws, rolled about the floor
all day, without the inconvenience of too much food or too much
clothing, under the parental superintendence of an elderly female,
who received the culprits at and for the consideration of sevenpence-
halfpenny per sn^all head per week. Sevenpence-halfpenny's wortb

lO Oliver Twist.

per week is a, good ronnd diet for a cliild ; a great deal may be got
for sovenpeucc-lialfpenny, quite enough to overload its stomach, and
make it uncomfortablo. The elderly female was a woman of wisdom
and experience ; she knew what was good for children ; and she had
a very accurate perception of what was good for herself. So, she
appropriated the greater part of the weekly stipend to her own use,
and consigned the rising parochial generation to even a shorter
allowance than was originally provided for them. Thereby finding
in the lowest depth a deeper still ; and proving herself a very great
experimental philosopher.

Everybody knows the story of another experimental philosopher
who had a great theory about a horse being able to live without eating,
and who demonstrated it so well, that he had got his own horse down
to a straw a day, and would unquestionably have rendered him a very
spirited and rampacious animal on nothing at all, if he had not died,
four-and-twenty hours before he was to have had his first comfortable
bait of air. Unfortunately for the experimental philosophy of the
female to whose protecting care Oliver Twist was delivered over,
a similar result usually attended the operation of Aer system ; for
at the very moment when a child had contrived to exist upon the
smallest possible portion of the weakest possible food, it did per-
versely happen in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it
sickened from want and cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got
half-smothered by accident ; in any one of which cases, the miserable
little being was usually summoned into another world, and there
gathered to the fathers it had never known in this.

Occasionally, when there was some more than usually interesting
inquest upon a parish child who had been overlooked in turning uj)
a bedstead, or inadvertently scalded to death when there happened to
be a washing — though the latter accident was very scarce, anything
approaching to a washing being of rare occurrence in the farm — the
jury would take it into their heads to ask troublesome questions, or the
parishioners would rebelliously affix their signatures to a remonstrance.
But these impertinences were speedily checked by the evidence of
the surgeon, and the testimony of the beadle ; the former of whom
had always opened the body and found nothing inside (which was very
probable indeed), and the latter of whom invariably swore whatever
the parish wanted ; which was very self-devotional. Besides, the
board made periodical pilgrimages to the farm, and always sent the
beadle the day before, to say they were going. The children were
neat and clean to behold, when they went ; and what more would the
people have !

It cannot be expected that this system of farming would produce
any very extraordinary or luxuriant crop. Oliver Twist's ninth birth-
day found him a pale thin child, somewhat diminutive in stature, and
decidedly small in circumference. But nature or inheritance had
implanted a good sturdy spirit in Oliver's breast. It had had plenty

An Important Personage. II

of room to expand, tlianks to the spare diet of the establishment ; and
perhaps to this circumstance may be attributed his having any ninth
birth-day at all. Be this as it may, however, it was his ninth birth-
day ; and he was keeping it in the coal-cellar with a select party of
two other young gentlemen, who, after participating with him in a
sound thrashing, had been locked up for atrociously presuming to bo
hungry, when Mrs. Mann, the good lady of the house, was unexpectedly
startled by the apparition of Mr. Bumble, the beadle, striving to undo
the wicket of the garden-gate.

" Goodness gracious ! Is that you, Mr. Bumble, sir ? " said Mrs.
Mann, thrusting her head out of the window in well-aifected ecstasies
of joy. " (Susan, take Oliver and them two brats up-stairs, and wash
'cm directly.) My heart alive ! Mr. Bumble, how glad I am to see
you, sure-ly ! "

Now, Mr. Bumble was a fat man, and a choleric; so, instead of
responding to this open-hearted salutation in a kindred spirit, he gave
the little wicket a tremendous shake, and then bestowed upon it a
kick which could have emanated from no leg but a beadle's.

" Lor, only think," said Mrs. Mann, running out, — for the three
boys had been removed by this time, — " only think of that ! That
I should have forgotten that the gate was bolted on the inside, on
account of them dear children ! Walk in, sir ; walk in, pray, Mr.
Bumble, do, sir."

Although this invitation was accompanied with a curtsey that might
have softened the heart of a churchwarden, it by no means mollified
the beadle.

" Do you think this respectful or proper conduct, Mrs. Mann,"
inquired Mr. Bumble, grasping his cane, " to keep the parish officers
a waiting at your garden-gate, when they come here upon porochial
business connected with the porochial orphans ? Are you aweer, Mrs.
Mann, that you are, as I may say, a porochial delegate, and a
stipendiary ? "

" I'm sure, Mr. Bumble, that I was only a telling one or two of the
dear children as is so fond of you, that it was you a coming," replied
Mrs. Mann with great humility.

Mr. Bumble had a great idea of his oratorical powers and his im-
portance. He had displayed the one, and vindicated the other. He
relaxed.

" Well, well, Mrs. Mann," he replied in a calmer tone ; " it may
be as you say ; it may be. Lead the way in, Mrs. Mann, for I como
on business, and have something to say."

Mrs. Mann ushered the beadle into a small parlour with a brick floor ;
placed a seat for him ; and officiously deposited his cocked hat and
cane on the table before him. Mr. Bumble wiped from his forehead
the perspiration which his walk had engendered, glanced complacently
at the cocked hat, and smiled. Yes, he smiled. Beadles are but
men : and Mr. Bumble smiled.

12 Oliver Twist.

" Now don't you be offended at what I'm a going to say," observed
Mrs. Mann, with captivating sweetness. " You've liad a long walk,
you know, or I wouldn't mention it. Now, will you take a little drop
of somethiuk, Mr. Bumble ? "

" Not a drop. Not a drop," said Mr. Bumble, waving his right hand
in a dignified, but placid manner.

" I think you will," said Mrs. Mann, who had noticed the tone of
the refusal, and the gesture that had accompanied it. " Just a leetlo
drop, with a little cold water, and a lump of sugar."

Mr. Bumble coughed.

" Now, just a leetle drop," said Mrs. Mann persuasively.

" What is it ? " inquired the beadle.

" Why, it's what I'm obliged to keep a little of in the house, to put
into the blessed infants' Daffy, when they ain't well, Mr. Bumble,"
replied Mi-s. Mann as she opened a corner cupboard, and took down a
bottle and glass. " It's gin. I'll not deceive you, Mr. B. It's gin."

" Do you give the children Daffy, Mrs. Mann ? " inquired Bumble,
following with his eyes the interesting process of mixing.

" Ah, bless 'em, that I do, dear as it is," replied the nurse. " I
couldn't see 'em suffer before my very eyes, you know, sir."

" No ; " said Mr. Bumble approvingly ; " no, you could not. You
are a humane woman, Mrs. Mann." (Here she set down the glass.)
" I shall take a early opportunity of mentioning it to the board, Mrs.
Mann." (He drew it towards him.) "You feel as a mother, Mrs.
Mann." (He stirred the gin-and-water.) "I — I drink your health
with cheerfulness, Mrs. Mann ; " and he swallowed half of it.

" And now about business," said the beadle, taking out a leathern
pocket-book. " The child that was half-baptized Oliver Twist, is nine
year old to-day."

" Bless him ! " interposed Mrs. Mann, inflaming her left eye with
the corner of her apron.

" And notwithstanding a offered reward of ten pound, which was
afterwards increased to twenty pound. Notwithstanding the most
superlative, and, I may say, supernat'ral exertions on the part of this
parish," said Bumble, " we have never been able to discover who is
his father, or what was his mother's settlement, name, or con — dition."

Mrs. Mann raised her hands in astonishment ; but added, after a
moment's reflection, " How comes he to have any name at all,
then?"

The beadle drew himself up with great pride, and said, "I
inwented it."

" You, Mr. Bumble ! "

"I, Mi's. Mann. We name our fondlings in alphabetical order.
The last was a S, — Swubble, I named him. This was a T, — Twist, I
named him. The next one as comes will be Unwin, and the next
Vilkins. I have got names ready made to the end of the alphabet,
and all the way through it again, when we come to Z."

The Hero wanted by a Mighty Power. 13

'' Why, you're quite a literary character, sir ! " said Mrs. Mann.

"Well, well," said the beadle, evidently gratified with the com-
pliment ; " perhaps I may be. Perhaps T may be, Mrs. Mann." He
finished the gin-and-water, and added, " Oliver being now too old to
remain lierc, the board have determined to have him back into the
house. I have come out myself to take him there. So let me see
him at once."

"I'll fetch him directly," said Mrs. Mann, leaving the room for
that purpose. Oliver, having had by this time as much of the outer
coat of dirt which encrusted his face and hands, removed, as could bo
scrubbed off" in one washing, was led into the room by his benevolent
protectress.

" Make a bow to the gentleman, Oliver," said Mrs. Mann.

Oliver made a bow, which was divided between the beadle on the
chair, and the cocked hat on the table.

"Will you go along with me, Oliver?" said Mr. Bumble, in a
majestic voice.

Oliver was about to say that he would go along with anybody with
great readiness, when, glancing upward, he caught sight of Mrs.
Mann, Avho had got behind the beadle's chair, and was shaking her
fist at him with a furious countenance. He took the hint at once, for
the fist had been too often impressed upon his body not to be deeply
impressed upon his recollection.

" Will she go with me ? " inquired poor Oliver.

" No, she can't," rejjlied Mr. Bumble. " But she'll come and see
you sometimes."

This was no very great consolation to the child. Young as he was,
however, he had sense enough to make a feint of feeling great regret
at going away. It was no very difficult matter for the boy to call
tears into his eyes. Hunger and recent ill-usage are great assistants
if you want to cry ; and Oliver cried very naturally indeed. Mrs.
Mann gave him a thousand embraces, and, what Oliver wanted a
great deal more, a piece of bread and butter, lest he should seem too
hungry when he got to the workhouse. With the slice of bread in
his hand, and the little brown-cloth parish cap on his head, Oliver
was then led away by Mr. Bumble from the wretched home where
one kind word or look had never lighted the gloom of his infant
years. And yet he burst into an agony of childish grief, as the cottage-
gate closed after him. Wretched as were the little companions in
misery he was leaving behind, they were the only friends he had ever
known ; and a sense of his loneliness in the great wide world, sank
into the child's heart for the first time.

Mr. Bumble walked on with long strides; little Oliver, firmly
grasping his gold-laced cuff, trotted beside him, inquiring at the end
of every quarter of a mile whether they were "nearly there." To
these interrogations Mr. Bumble returned very brief and snappish
replies ; for the temporary blandness which gin-and-water awakens in

14 Oliver Tzuist.

some bosoms Lad by this time evaporated ; and lie was once again a
beadle.

Oliver had not been within the walls of the workhonse a quarter of
an hour, and had scarcely completed the demolition of a second slice
of bread,, when Mr. Bumble, Avho had handed him over to the care of
an old woman, returned ; and, telling him it was a board night, informed
him that the board had said he was to appear before it forthwith.

Not having a very clearly defined notion of what a live board was,
Oliver was rather astounded by this intelligence, and was not quite
certain whether he ought to laugh or cry. He had no time to think
about the matter, however ; for Mr. Bumble gave him a tap on the
head, with his cane, to wake him up : and another on the back to
make him lively : and bidding him follow, conducted him into a large
whitewashed room, where eight or ten fat gentlemen were sitting
round a table. At the top of the table, seated in an arm-chair rather
higher than the rest, was a particularly fat gentleman with a very
round, red face.

" Bow to the board," said Bumble. Oliver brushed away two or
three tears that were lingering in his eyes ; and seeing no board but
the table, fortunately bowed to that.

" What's your name, boy ? " said the gentleman in the high chair.

Oliver was frightened . at the sight of so many gentlemen, which
made him tremble : and the beadle gave him another tap behind,
which made him cry. These two causes made him answer in a very
low and hesitating voice ; whereupon a gentleman in a white waistcoat
said he was a fool. Which was a capital way of i-aising his spirits,
and putting him quite at his ease.

" Boy," said the gentleman in the high chaii*, '^ listen to me. You
know you're an orphan, I suppose ? "

" What's that, sir ? " inquired poor Oliver.

" The boy is a fool — I thought he was," said the gentleman in the
white waistcoat.

" Hush ! " said the gentleman who had spoken first. " You know
you've got no father or mother, and that you were brought up by the
parish, don't you ? "

" Yes, sir," replied Oliver, weeping bitterly.

" What are you crying for ? " inquired the gentleman in the white
waistcoat. And to be sure it was very extraordinary. What could
the boy be crying for ?

" I hope you say your prayers every night," said another gentleman
in a gruff voice ; " and pray for the people who feed you, and take
cure of you — like a Christian."

"Yes, sir," stammered the boy. The gentleman who spoke last
was unconsciously right. It would have been very like a Christian,
and a marvellously good Christian, too, if Oliver had prayed for the
people who fed and took care of him. But he hadn't, because nobody
had taught him.

Before the Board. 15

" Well ! You have come b6re to bo educated, and taught a useful
trade," said the red-faced gentleman in the high chair.

" So you'll begin to pick oakum to-morrow morning at six o'clock,"
added the surly one in the white waistcoat.

For the combination of both these blessings in the one simple
process of picking oakum, Oliver bowed low by the direction of the
beadle, and was then hurried away to a large ward : where, on a rough,
hard bed, he sobbed himself to sleep. What a noble illustration of
the tender laws of England ! They let the paupei-s go to sleep !

Poor Oliver ! He little thought, as he lay sleeping in happy im-
consciuusness of all around him, that the board had that very day
arrived at a decision which would exercise the most material influence
over all his future fortunes. But they had. And this was it :

The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical
men ; and when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse,
they found out at once, what ordinary folks would never have dis-
covered— the poor people liked it ! It was a regular place of public
entertainment for the poorer classes ; a tavern where there was nothing
to pay ; a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all the year round ;
a brick and moi-tar elysium, where it was all play and no work.
" Oho ! " said the board, looking very knowing ; " we are the fellows
to set this to rights ; we'll stop it all, in no time." So, they estab-
lished the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative (for
they would compel nobody, not they), of being starved by a gradual
process in the house, or by a quick one out of it. With this view,
they contracted with the water- works to lay on an unlimited supply of
water ; and with a corn-factor to supply periodically small quantities
of oatmeal ; and issued three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion
twice a week, and half a roll on Sundays. They made a great many
other wise and humane regulations, having reference to the ladies,
which it is not necessary to repeat ; kindly undertook to divorce poor
married people, in consequence of the great expense of a suit in
Doctors' Commons ; and, instead of compelling a man to support his
family, as they had theretofore done, took his family away from him,
and made him a bachelor ! There is no saying how many applicants
for relief, under these last two heads, might have started up in all
classes of society, if it had not been coupled with the workhouse ; but
the board were long-headed men, and had provided for this difficulty.
The relief was inseparable from the workhouse and the gruel ; and
that frightened people.

For the first six months after Oliver Twist was removed, the system
was in full operation. It was rather expensive at first, in consequence
of the increase in the undertaker's bill, and the necessity of taking in
the clothes of all the paupers, which fluttered loosely on their wasted,
shrunken forms, after a week or two's gruel. But the number of work-
house inmates got thin as well as the paupei's ; and the board were in
ecstasies.

1 6 Oliver Tivist

The room in which the boys were fed, was a large stone hall, witli
a copper at one end : out of which the master, dressed in an apron for
the purpose, and assisted by one or two women, ladled the gruel at
meal-times. Of this festive composition each boy had one porringer,
and no more — except on occasions of great public rejoicing, when he
had two ounces and a quarter of bread besides. The bowls never
wanted washing. The boys polished them with their spoons till they
shone again ; and when they had performed this operation (which
never took very long, the spoons being nearly as large as the bowls),
they would sit staring at the copper, with such eager eyes, as if they
could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed ;
employing themselves, meanwhile, in sucking their fingers most
assiduously, with the view of catching up any stray splashes of gruel
that might have been cast thereon. Boys have genei'ally excellent
appetites. Oliver Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of
slow starvation for three months : at last they got so voracious and
wild with hunger, that one boy, who was tall for his age, and hadn't
been used to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a small cook-
shop), hinted darkly to his companions, that unless he had another
basin of gruel j^er diem, he was afraid he might some night happen to
eat the boy who slept next him, who happened to be a weakly youth
of tender age. He had a wild, hungry eye; and they implicitly
believed him. A council was held ; lots were cast who should walk
up to the master after supper that evening, and ask for more ; and it
fell to Oliver Twist.

The evening arrived ; the boys took their places. The master, in
his cook's uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper
assistants ranged themselves behind him ; the gruel was served out ;
and a long grace was said over the short commons. The gruel dis-
appeared ; the boys whispered each other, and winked at Oliver ;
while his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was
desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the
table ; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said :
somewhat alarmed at his own temerity :

" Please, sir, I want some more."

The master was a fat, healthy man ; but he turned very pale. He
gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds,
and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were
paralysed with wonder ; the boys with fear

" What ! " said the master at length, in a faint voice.

" Please, sir," replied Oliver, " I want some more."

The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle ; pinioned
him in his arms ; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.

The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. Bumble
rushed into the room in great excitement, and addressing the gentle-
man in the high chair, said,

" Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir ! Oliver Twist has asked
for more I "

^^i(^i!yzAey/^a^m//?2^^yty/99^^

In Solitary Confinement. 17

There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every
countenance.

" For more ! " said Mr. Limbkins. " Compose yourself, Bumble,
and answer me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more,
after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary ? "

" Ho did, sir," replied Bumble.

" That boy will be hung," said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.
" I know that boy will bo hung."

Nobody controverted the prophetic gentleman's opinion. An
animated discussion took place. Oliver was ordered into instant con-
finement ; and a bill was next morning pasted on the outside of the
gate, offering a reward of five pounds to anybody who would take
Oliver Twist off the hands of the parish. In other words, five pounds
and Oliver Twist were offered to any man or woman who wanted an
apprentice to any trade, business, or calling.

"I never was more convinced of anything in my life," said the
gentleman in the white waistcoat, as he knocked at the gate and read
the bill next morning : " I never was more convinced of anything in
my life, than I am that that boy will come to be hung."

As I purpose to show in the sequel whether the white-waistcoated
gentleman was right or not, I should perhaps mar the interest of this
narrative (supposing it to possess any at all), if I ventured to hint
just yet, whether the life of Oliver Twist had this violent termination
or no.

CHAPTER in.

RELATES HOW OLIVER TWIST WAS VERY NEAR GETTING A PLACE,
WHICH WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A SINECURE.

For a week after the commission of the impious and profane offence
of asking for moi*e, Oliver remained a close prisoner in the dark and
solitary room to which he had been consigned by the wisdom and
mercy of the board. It appears, at first sight, not unreasonable to
suppose, that, if he had entertained a be coming feeling of respect for
the prediction of the gentleman in the white waistcoat, he would have
established that sage individual's prophetic character, once and for
ever, by tying one end of liis pocket-handkerchief to a hook in the
wall, and attaching himself to the other. To the performance of this
feat, however, there was one obstacle : namely, that pocket-handker-
chiefs being decided articles of luxury, had been, for all future times
and ages, removed from the noses of paupers by the express order ot
the board, in council assembled : solemnly given and pronounced
under their hands and seals. There was a stijl greater obstacle in

0

1 8 Oliver Twist.

Oliver's youth and childishness. He only cried bitterly all day;
and, when the long, dismal night came on, spread his little hands
before his eyes to shut out the darkness, and crouching in the corner,
tried to sleep : ever and anon waking with a start and tremble, and
drawing himself closer and closer to the wall, as if to feel even its
cold hard surface were a protection in the gloom and loneliness which
surrounded him.

Let it not be supposed by the enemies of " the system," that, during
the period of his solitary incarceration, Oliver was denied the benefit
of exercise, the pleasure of society, or the advantages of religious con-
solation. As for exercise, it was nice cold weather, and he was allowed
to perform his ablutions every morning under the pump, in a stone
yard, in the presence of Mr. Bumble, who prevented his catching
cold, and caused a tingling sensation to pervade his frame, by repeated
applications of the cane. As for society, he was carried every other
day into the hall where the boys dined, and there sociably flogged as
a public warning and example. And so far from being denied the
advantages of religious consolation, he was kicked into the same
apartment every evening at prayer-time, and there permitted to listen
to, and console his mind mth, a general supplication of the boys, con-
taining a special clause, therein inserted by authority of the board,
in which they entreated to be made good, virtuous, contented, and
obedient, and to be guarded from the sins and vices of Oliver Twist :
whom the supplication distinctly set forth to be under the exclusive
patronage and protection of the powers of wickedness, and an article
direct from the manufactory of the very Devil himself.

It chanced one morning, whUe Oliver's affairs were in this auspicious
and comfortable state, that Mr. Gamfield, chimney-sweep, went his
way down the High Street, deeply cogitating in his mind his ways
and means of paying certain arrears of rent, for which his landlord
had become rather pressing. Mr. Gamfield's most sanguine estimate
of his finances could not raise them within full five pounds of the
desired amount ; and, in a species of arithmetical desperation, he was
alternately cudgelling his brains and his donkey, when, passing the
workhouse, his eyes encountered the bill on the gate.

" Wo — o ! " said Mr. Gamfield to the donkey.

The donkey was in a state of profound abstracticm: wondering,
probably, whether he was destined to be regaled with a cabbage-
stalk or two when he had disposed of the two sacks of soot with
which the little cart was laden ; so, without noticing the word of
command, he jogged onward.

Mr. Gramfield growled a fierce imprecation on the donkey generally,
but more particularly on his eyes ; and, running after him, bestowed
a blow on his head, which woxild inevitably have beaten in any skull
but a donkey's. Then, catching hold of the bridle, he gave his jaw
a sharp wrench, by way of gentle reminder that he was not his own
master ; and b^ these means turned hip) round. He then gave him

A right pleasant Trade. 19

another blow on the head, just to stnn him till he came back again.
Having completed these arrangements, he walked np to the gate, to
read the bill.

The gentleman with the white waistcoat was standing at the gate
with his hands behind him, after having delivered himself of some
profound sentiments in the board-room. Having witnessed the little
dispute between Mr. Gamfield and the donkey, he smiled joyously
when that person came up to read the bUl, for he saw at once that
Mr. Gamfield was exactly the sort of master Oliver Twist wanted.
Mr. Gamfield smiled, too, as he perused the document ; for five pounds
was just the sum he had been wishing for ; and, as to the boy with
which it was encumbered, Mr. Gamfield, knowing what the dietary
of the workhouse was, well knew he would be a nice small pattern,
just the very thing for register stoves. So, he spelt the bill through
again, from beginning to end; and then, touching his fur cap in
token of humility, accosted the gentleman in the white waistcoat.

" This here boy, sir, wot the parish wants to 'prentis," said Mr.
Gamfield.

" Ay, my man," said the gentleman in the white waistcoat, with a
condescending smile. " What of him ? "

" If the parish vould like him to learn a right pleasant trade, in a
good 'spectable chimbley-sweepin' bisness," said Mr. Gamfield, " I
wants a 'prentis, and I am ready to take him."

" Walk in," said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. Mr. Gramfield
having lingered behind, to give the donkey another blow on the head,
and another wrench of the jaw, as a caution not to run away in his
absence, followed the gentleman with the white waistcoat into the
i-oom where Oliver had first seen him.

" It's a nasty trade," said Mr. Limbkins, when Gamfield had again
stated his wish.

" Young boys have been smothered in chimneys before now," said
another gentleman.

" That's acause they damped the straw afore they lit it in the
chimbley to make 'em come down agin," said Gamfield ; " that's all
smoke, and no blaze ; vereas smoke ain't o' no use at all in making
a boy come down, for it only sinds him to sleep, and that's wot he
likes. Boys is wery obstinit, and wery lazy, gen'lmen, and there's
nothink like a good hot blaze to make 'em come down vith a run.
It's humane too, gen'lmen, acause, even if they've stuck in the
chimbley, roasting their feet makes 'em struggle to hextricate their-
selves."

The gentleman in the white waistcoat appeared very much amused
by this explanation ; but his mirth was speedily checked by a look
from Mr. Limbkins. The board then proceeded to converse among
themselves for a few minutes, but in so low a tone, that the words
" saving of expenditure," " looked well in the accounts," " have a
printed report published," were alone audible. These only chanced

20 Oliver Twist.

to be heard, indeed, on account of their being very frequently repeated
with great emphasis.

At length the whispering ceased ; and the members of the board,
having resumed their seats and their solemnity, Mr. Limbkins said :

" We have considered your proposition, and we don't approve of it."
Not at all," said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.

" Decidedly not," added the other members.

As Mr. Gamfield did happen to labour under the slight imputation
of having bruised three or four boys to death already, it occurred to
him that the board had, perhaps, in some unaccountable freak, taken
it into their heads that this extraneous circumstance ought to influence
their proceedings. It was very unlike their general mode of doing
business, if they had ; but still, as he had no particular wish to revive
the rumour, he twisted his cap in his hands, and walked slowly from
the table.

" So you won't let me have him, gen'lmen ? " said Mr. Gamfield,
pausing near the door.

" No," replied Mr. Limbkins ; " at least, as it's a nasty business, we
think you ought to take something less than the premium we offered."

Mr. Gamfield's countenance brightened, as, with a quick step, he
returned to the table, and said,

" What'll you give, gen'lmen ? Come ! Don't be too hard on a
poor man. "VVhat'll you give ? "

" I should say, three pound ten was plenty," said Mr. Limbkins.

" Ten shillings too much," said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.

" Come ! " said Gamfield ; " say four pound, gen'lmen. Say four
pound, and you've got rid of him for good and all. There ! "

" Three pound ten," repeated Mr. Limbkins, firmly.

" Come ! I'll split the difference, gen'lmen," urged Gamfield.
" Three pound fifteen."

" Not a farthing more," was the firm rejjly of Mr. Limbkins.

"You're desperate hard upon me, gen'lmen," said Gamfield,
wavering.

" Pooh ! pooh ! nonsense ! " said the gentleman in the white waist-
coat. "He'd be cheap with nothing at all, as a premium. Take him,
you silly fellow ! He's just the boy for you. He wants the stick,
now and then : it'll do him good ; and his board needn't come very
expensive, for he hasn't been over-fed since he was born. Ha ! ha !
ha!"

Mr. Gamfield gave an arch look at the faces round the table, and,
observing a smile on all of them, gi-adually broke into a smile himself.
The bargain was made. Mr. Bumble was at once instructed that
Oliver Twist and his indentures were to be conveyed before the
magistrate, for signature and approval, that very afternoon.

In pursuance of this determination, little Oliver, to his excessive
astonishment, was released from bondage, and ordered to put himself
iato a clean shirt. He had hardly achieved this very unusual gym-

Almost apprenticed. 21

nastic performance, when Mr. Bumble brought him, with his cwn
hands, a basin of gmel, and the holiday allowance of two ounces and
a quarter of bread. At this tremendous sight, Oliver began to cry
very piteously : thinking, not uxmaturally, that the board must have
determined to kill him for some useful purpose, or they never would
have begun to fatten him up in that way.

" Don't make your eyes red, Oliver, but eat your food and be thank-
ful," said Mr. Bumble, in a tone of impressive pomposity. " You're
a going to be made a 'prentice of, Oliver."

" A 'prentice, sir ! " said the child, trembling.

" Yes, Oliver," said Mr. Bumble. " The kind and blessed gentle-
men which is so many parents to you, Oliver, when you have none of
your own : are a going to 'prentice you : and to set you up in life,
and make a man of you : although the expense to the parish is three
pound ten! — three pound ten, Oliver! — seventy shillins — one hundred
and forty sixpences ! — and all for a naughty orphan which nobody
can't love."

As Mr. Bumble paused to take breath, after delivering this address
in an awful voice, the tears rolled down the poor child's face, and he
sobbed bitterly.

" Come," said Mr. Bumble, somewhat less pompously, for it was
gratifying to his feelings to observe the effect his eloquence had pro-
duced ; " Come, Oliver ! Wipe your eyes with the cuffs of your
jacket, and don't cry into your gruel ; that's a very foolish action,
Oliver." It certainly was, for there was quite enough water in it
already.

On their way to the magistrate, Mr. Bumble instructed Oliver that
all he would have to do, would be to look very happy, and say, when
the gentleman asked him if he wanted to be apj)renticed, that he
should like it very much indeed ; both of which injunctions Oliver
promised to obey : the rather as Mr. Bumble threw in a gentle hint,
that if he failed in either particular, there was no telling what would
bo done to him. When they arrived at the office, he was shut up in
a little room by himself, and admonished by Mr. Bumble to stay there,
until he came back to fetch him.

There the boy remained, with a palpitating heart, for half an hour.
At the expiration of which time Mr. Bumble thrust in his head, un-
atlorned with the cocked hat, and said aloud :

"Now, Oliver, my dear, come to the gentleman." As Mr. Bumble
said this, he put on a grim and threatening look, and added, in a low
voice, " Mind what I told you, you young rascal ! "

Oliver stared innocently in Mr. Bumble's face at this somewhat
contradictory style of address ; but that gentleman prevented his
offering any remark thereupon, by leading him at once into an adjoin-
ing room : the door of which was open. It was a large room, with a
great window. Behind a desk, sat two old gentlemen with powdered
heads : one of whom was reading the newspaper ; while the other was

S-"; Oliver Tzvist

perusing, with the aid of a pair of tortoise-shell spectacles, a small
piece of parchment which lay before him. Mr. Limbkins was standing
in front of the desk on one side ; and Mr. Gamfield, with a partially
washed face, on the other ; while two or three bluff-looking men, in
top-boots, were lounging about.

The old gentleman with the spectacles gradually dozed off, over the
little bit of parchment ; and there was a short pause, after Oliver had
been stationed by Mr. Bumble in front of the desk.

" This is the boy, your worship," said Mr. Bumble.

The old gentleman who was reading the newspaper raised his head
for a moment, and pulled the other old gentleman by the sleeve ;
whereupon, the last-mentioned old gentleman woke np.

" Oh, is this the boy ? " said the old gentleman.

" This is him, sir," replied Mr. Bumble. " Bow to the magistrate,
my dear."

Oliver roused himself, and made his best obeisance. He had been
wondering, with his eyes fixed on the magistrates' powdei*, whether
all boards were born with that white stuff on their heads, and were
boards from thenceforth on that account.

" Well," said the old gentleman, " I suppose he's fond of chimney-
sweeping ? "

" He doats on it, your worship," replied Bumble ; giving Oliver a
sly pinch, to intimate that he had better not say he didn't.

" And he will be a sweep, will he ? " inquired the old gentleman.

*'If we was to bind him to any other trade to-morrow, he'd run
away simultaneous, your worship," replied Bumble.

" And this man that's to be his master — you, sir — you'll treat him
well, and feed him, and do all that sort of thing, will you ? " said the
old gentleman.

""When I says I will, I means I will," replied Mr. Gamfield
doggedly.

" You're a rough speaker, my friend, but you look an honest, open-
hearted man," said the old gentleman : turning his spectacles in the
direction of the candidate for Oliver's premium, whose villainous
countenance was a regular stamped receipt for cruelty. But the
magistrate was half blind and half childish, so he couldn't reasonably
be expected to discern what other people did.

" I hope 1 am, sir,'' said Mr. Gamfield, with an ugly leer.

" I have no doubt you are, my friend," replied the old gentleman :
fixing his spectacles more firmly on his nose, and looking about him
for the inkstand.

It was the critical moment of Oliver's fate. If the inkstand had
been where the old gentleman thought it was, he would have dipped
his pen into it, and signed the indentures, and Oliver would have
been straightway hurried off. But, as it chanced to be immediately
under his nose, it followed, as a matter of course, that he looked all
over his desk for it, without finding it ; and happening in the course

<^^«^^<€^e^J<4s^ mi^/2^j€t€/yn^^<:^t/t^S'7^/cce'y^

But not quite, 23

of his search to look straight before him, his gaze encountered the
pale and terrified face of Oliver Twist : who, despite all the admonitory
looks and pinches of Bumble, was regarding the repulsive countenance
of his future master, with a mingled expression of horror and fear,
too palpable to be mistaken, even by a half-blind magistrate.

The old gentleman stopped, laid down his pen, and looked from
Oliver to Mr. Limbkins ; who attempted to take snuff with a cheerful
and unconcerned aspect.

" My boy ! " said the old gentleman, leaning over the desk. Oliver
started at the sound. He might be excused for doing so : for the
words were kindly said ; and strange sounds frighten one. He
trembled violently, and burst into tears.

" My boy 1 " said the old gentleman, " you look pale and alarmed.
What is the matter ? "

" Stand a little away from him, Beadle," said the other magistrate :
laying aside the paper, and leaning forward with an expression of
interest. "Now, boy, tell us what's the matter : don't. be afraid."

Oliver fell on his knees, and clasping his hands together, prayed
that they would order him back to the dark room — that they would
starve him — beat him — kill him if they pleased — rather than send
him away with that dreadful man.

" Well ! " said Mr. Bumble, raising his hands and eyes with most
impressive solemnity. " Well ! of all the artful and designing orphans
that ever I see, Oliver, you are one of the most bare-facedest."

" Hold your tongue, Beadle," said the second old gentleman, when
Mr. Bumble had given vent to this compound adjective.

" I beg your worship's pardon," said Mr. Bumble, incredulous of
his having heard aright. " Did your worship speak to me ? "

" Yes. Hold your tongue."

Mr. Bumble was stupefied with astonishment. A beadle ordered
to hold his tongue ! A moral revolution !

The old gentleman in the tortoise-shell ispectacles looked at his
companion, he nodded significantly.

" We refuse to sanction these indentures," said the old gentleman :
tossing aside the piece of parchment as he spoke.

" I hope," stammered Mr. Limbkins : " I hope the magistrates will
not form the opinion that the authorities have been guUty of any
improper conduct, on the unsupported testimony of a mere child."

"The magistrates are not called upon to pronoimce any opinion
on the matter," said the second old gentleman eharply. " Take the
boy back to the workhouse, and treat him kiudly. He seems to
want it."

That same evening, the gentleman in the white waistcoat most
positively and decidedly affirmed, not only that Oliver would be hung,
but that he would be drawn and quartered into the bargain. Mr.
Bumble shook his head with gloomy mystery, and said he wished ho
might come to good ; whereunto Mr. Gamfield replied, that he wished

24 Oliver Twist.

lie might come to him ; which, although ho agreed with the beadle in
most matters, would seem to be a wish of a totally opposite description.
The next morning, the public were once more informed that Oliver
Twist was again To Let, and that five pounds would be paid to
anybody who would take possession of him.

CHAPTER IV.

OLTVEB, BEING OFFERED ANOTHER PLACE, MAKES HIS FIRST ENTRY INTO

PUBLIC LIFE.

In great families, when an advantageous place cannot be obtained,
either in possession, reversion, remainder, or expectancy, for the young
man who is growing up, it is a very general custom to send him to
sea. The board, in imitation of so wise and salutary an example,
took counsel together on the expediency of shipping off Oliver Twist,
in some small trading vessel bound to a good unhealthy port. This
suggested itself as the very best thing that could possibly be done
with him • the probability being, that the skipper would flog him to
death, in a playful mood, some day after dinner, or would knock his
brains out with an iron bar ; both pastimes being, as is pretty generally
known, very favourite and common recreations among gentlemen of
that class. The more the case presented itself to the board, in this
point of view, the more manifold the advantages of the step appeared ;
so, they came to the conclusion that the only way of providing for
Oliver effectually, was to send him to sea without delay.

Mr. Bumble had been despatched to make various preliminary
inquiries, with the view of finding out some captain or other who
wanted a cabin-boy without any friends ; and was returning to the
workhouse to communicnte the result of his mission ; when he en-
countered at the gate, no less a person than Mr. Sowerberry. tlie
parochial undertaker.

Mr. Sowerberry was a tall, gaunt, large-jointed man, attired in a
suit of threadbare black, with darned cotton stockings of the same
colour, and shoes to answer. His features were not naturally intended
to wear a smiling aspect, but he was in general rather given to pro-
fessional jocosity. His step was elastic, and his face betokened
inward pleasantry, as he advanced to Mr. Bumble, and shook him
cordially by the hand.

" I have taken the measure ot the two women that died last night,
Mr. Bumble," said the undertaker.

" You'll make your fortune, Mr. Sowerberry," said the beadle, as
he thrust his thumb and forefinger into the proffered snuff-box of the
undertaker : which was an ingenious little model of a patent coffin.
**! say you'll make your fortune, Mr. Sowerberry," repeated Mr.

Another Place offers. 25

Bumble, tapping the undertaker on the shoulder, in a friendly manner,
with his cane.

" Think so ? " said the undertaker in a tone which half admitted
and half disputed the probability of the event. " The prices allowed
by the board arc very small, Mr. Bumble."

" So are the coffins," replied the beadle : with precisely as near an
approach to a laugh as a great official ought to indulge in.

Mr. Sowerberry was much tickled at this : as of course he ought to
be ; and laughed a long time without cessation. " Well, well, Mr.
Bumble," he said at length, " thei-e's no denying that, since the new
system of feeding has come in, the coffins are something narrower and
more shallow than they used to be ; but we must have some profit,
Mr. Bumble. Well-seasoned timber is an expensive article, sir ; and
all the iron handles come, by canal, from Birmingham."

" Well, well," said Mr. Bumble, " every trade has its drawbacks.
A fair profit is, of course, allowable."

" Of course, of course," replied the undertaker ; " and if I don't get
a profit upon this or that particular article, why, I make it up in tiie
long-run, you see — he ! he ! he !

"Just so," said Mr Bumble.

"Though I must say," continued the undertaker, resuming the
current of observations which the beadle had interrupted : " though
I must say, Mr. Bumble, that I have to contend against one very
great disadvantage : which is, that all the stout people go off the
quickest. The people who have been better off, and have paid rates
for many years, are the first to sink when they come into the house ;
and let me tell you, Mr. Bumble, that three or four inches over one's
calculation makes a great hole in one's profits : especially when one
has a family to provide for, sir,"

As Mr. Sowerberry said this, with the becoming indignation of an
ill-used man ; and as Mr. Bumble felt that it rather tended to convoy
a reflection on the honour of the parish ; the latter gentleman thought
it advisable to change the subject. Oliver Twist being uppermost in
his mind, he made him his theme.

" By the bye," said Mr. Bumble, " you don't know anybody who
wants a boy, do you ? A porochial 'prentis, who is at present a dead-
weight ; a millstone, as I may say ; round the porochial throat ?
Liberal terms, Mr. Sowerberry, liberal terms ! " As Mr. Bumble
spoke, he raised his cane to the bill above him, and gave three distinct
raps upon the words " five pounds : " which were printed thereon in
Roman capitals of gigantic size.

" Gadso ! " said the undertaker : taking Mr. Bumble by the gilt-
edged lappel of his official coat ; " that's just the very thing I wanted
to speak to you about. You know — dear me, what a very elegant
button this is, Mr. Bumble ! I never noticed it before."

" Yes, I think it is rather pretty," said the beadle, glancing proudly
downwards at the large brass buttons which embellished his coat.

26 Oliver Twist.

" Tho die is the same as the porochial seal — the Good Samaritan
healing the sick and bruised man. The board presented it to me on
New-year's morning, Mr. Sowerberry. I pnt it on, I remember, for
the first time, to attend the inquest on that reduced tradesman, who
died in a doorway at midnight."

" I recollect," said the undertaker. " The jury brought it in, ' Died
from exposure to the cold, and want of the common necessaries of life,'
didn't they ? "

Mr. Bumble nodded.

" And they made it a special verdict, I think," said the undertaker,
" by adding some words to the effect, that if the relieying officer
had "

" Tush ! Foolery ! " interposed the beadle. " If the board attended
to all the nonsense that ignorant jurymen talk, they'd have enough
to do."

" Very true," said the undertaker ; " they would indeed."

" Juries," said Mr. Bumble, grasping his cane tightly, as was his
wont when working into a passion: "juries is ineddicated, vulgar,
grovelling wretches."

" So they are," said the undertaker.

" They haven't no more philosophy nor political economy about 'em
than that," said the beadle, snapping his fingers contemptuously.

" No more they have," acquiesced the undertaker.

" I despise 'em," said the beadle, growing very red in the face.

" So do I," rejoined the undertaker.

" And I only wish we'd a jury of the independent sort, in the house
for a week or two," said the beadle ; " the miles and regulations of the
board would soon bring their spirit down for 'em."

"Let 'em alone for that," replied the undertaker. So saying, he
smiled, approvingly : to calm the rising wrath of the indignant parish
officer.

Mr. Bumble lifted off his cocked hat ; took a handkerchief from the
inside of the crown ; wiped from his forehead the perspiration which
his i"ago had engendered ; fixed the cocked hat on again ; and, tui'ning
to the undertaker, said in a calmer voice :

" Well ; what about the boy ? "

" Oh ! " replied the undertaker ; " why, you know, Mr. Bumble, I
pay a good deal towards the poor's rates."

« Hem ! " said Mr. Bumble. " Well ? "

" Well," replied the undertaker, " I was thinking that if I pay so
much towards 'em, I've a right to get as much out of 'em as I can,
Mr. Bumble ; and so — and so — I think I'll take the boy myself."

Mr. Bumble grasped the undertaker by the arm, and led him into
the building. Mr. Sowerberry was closeted with the board for five
minutes; and it was arranged that Oliver should go to him that
evening " upon liking "■ — a phrase which means, in the case of a parish
apprentice, that if the master find, upon a short trial, that he can get

Taken upon Liking. 27

enough work out of a boy without putting too much food into him, he
(shall have him for a term of years, to do what he likes with.

When little Oliver was taken before " the gentlemen " that evening ;
and informed that he was to go, that night, as general house-lad to a
coffin-maker's j and that if he complained of his situation, or over came
back to the parish agam, he would be sent to sea, there to be drowned,
or knocked on the head, as the case might be, he evinced so little
emotion, that they by common consent pronounced him a hardened
young rascal, and ordered Mr. Bumble to remove him forthwith.

Now, although it was very natural that the board, of all people in
the world, should feel in a great state of virtuous astonishment and
horror at the smallest tokens of want of feeling on the part of any-
body, they were rather out, in this particular instance. The simple
fact was, that Oliver, instead of possessing too little feeling, possessed
rather too much ; and was in a fair way of being reduced, for life, to
a state of brutal stupidity and sullenness by the ill usage he had
received. He heard the news of his destination, in perfect silence ;
and, having had his luggage put into his hand — which was not very
difficult to carry, inasmuch as it was all comprised within the limits
of a brown paper parcel, about half a foot square by three inches deep
— he pulled his cap over his eyes ; and once more attaching himself
to Mr. Bumble's coat cuff, was led away by that dignitary to a new
scene of suffering.

For some time, Mr. Bumble drew Oliver along, without notice or
remark ; for the beadle carried his head very erect, as a beadle always
should : and, it being a windy day, little Oliver was completely en-
shrouded by the skirts of Mr. Bumble's coat as they blew open, and
disclosed to great advantage his flapped waistcoat and drab plush
knee-breeches. As they drew near to their destination, however, Mr.
Bumble thought it expedient to look down, and see that the boy was
in good order for inspection by his new master : which he accordingly
did, with a fit and becoming air of gracious patronage.

« Oliver ! " said Mr. Bumble.

" Yes, sir," replied Oliver, in a low, tremulous voice.

" Pull that cap off your eyes, and hold up your head, sir."

Although Oliver did as he was desired, at once ; and passed the
back of his unoccupied hand briskly across his eyes, he left a tear in
them when he looked up at his conductor. As Mr. Bumble gazed
sternly upon him, it rolled down his cheek. It was followed by
another, and another. The child made a strong effort, but it was an
unsuccessful one. Withdrawing his other hand from Mr. Bumble's
he covered his face with both ; and wept until the tears sprung out
from between his chin and bony fingers.

" Well ! " exclaimed Mr. Bumble, stopping short, and darting at his
little charge a look of intense malignity. " Well ! Of all the un-
gratefullest, and worst-disposed boys as ever I see, Oliver, you are
the "

28 Oliver Tzvist.

" No, no, sir," sobbed Oliver, clinging to the hand which held the
well-known cane ; " no, no, sir ; I will be good indeed ; indeed, indeed
I will, sir ! I am a very little boy, sir ; and it is so — so "

" So what ? " inquired Mr. Bumble in amazement.

" So lonely, sir ! So very lonely ! " cried the child. " Everybody
hates me. Oh ! sir, don't, don't pray be cross to me ! " The child
beat his hand upon his heart ; and looked in his companion's face,
with tears of real agony.

Mr. Bumble regarded Oliver's piteous and helpless look, with some
astonishment, for a few seconds ; hemmed three or four times in a
husky manner ; and, after muttering something about " that trouble-
some cough," bade Oliver dry his eyes and be a good boy. Then once
more taking his hand, ho walked on with him in silence.

The undertaker, who had just put up the shutters of his shop, was
making some entries in his day-book by the light of a most appropriate
dismal candle, when Mr. Bumble entered.

" Aha ! " said the undertaker : looking up from the book, and
pausing in the middle of a word ; " is that you. Bumble ? "

" No ono else, Mr. Sowerberry," replied the beadle. " Here ! I've
brought the boy." Oliver made a bow.

" Oh ! that's the boy, is it ? " said the undertaker : raising the
candle above his head, to get a better view of Oliver. " Mrs. Sower-
berry, will you have the goodness to come here a moment, my
dear?"

Mrs. Sowerberry emerged from a little room behind the shop, and
presented the form of a short, thin, squeezed-up woman, with a
vixenish countenance.

" My dear," said Mr. Sowerberry, deferentially, " this is the boy
from the workhouse that I told you of." Oliver bowed again.

" Dear me ! " said the undertaker's wife, " he's very small."

" Why, he ^s rather small," replied Mr. Bumble : looking at Oliver
as if it were his fault that he was no bigger ; " he is small. There's
no denying it. But he'll grow, Mrs. Sowerberry — he'll grow."

" Ah ! I dare say he will," replied the lady pettishly, " on our
victuals and our drink. I see no saving in parish children, not I ; for
they always cost more to keep, than they're worth. However, men
always think they know best. There ! Get down-stairs, little bag o'
bones." With this, the undertaker's wife opened a side door, and
pushed Oliver down a steep flight of stairs into a stone cell, damp and
dark : forming the ante-room to the coal-cellar, and denominated
" kitchen : " wherein sat a slatternly girl, in shoes down at heel, and
blue worsted stockings very much out of repair.

" Here, Charlotte," said Mrs. Sowerberry, who had followed Oliver
down, " give this boy some of the cold bits that were put by for Trip.
He hasn't come home since the morning, so he may go without 'em.
I dare say the boy isn't too dainty to eat 'em — are you, boy?"

Oliver, whose eyes had glistened at the mention of meat, and who

In the Undertaker's Shop. 29

was trembling with eagerness to devour it, replied in the negative ;
and a plateful of coarse broken victuals was set before him.

I wish some well-fed philosopher, whose meat and drink turn to gall
within him ; whose blood is ice, whose heart is iron ; could have seen
Oliver Twist clutching at the dainty viands that the dog had neglected.
I wish he could have witnessed the horrible avidity with which Oliver
tore the bits asunder with all the ferocity of famine. There is only
one thing I should like better ; and that would be to see the Philo-
sopher making the same sort of meal himself, with the same relish.

" Well," said the undertaker's wife, when Oliver had finished hig
supper : which she had regarded in silent horror, and with fearful
auguries of his future appetite : " have you done ? "

There being nothing eatable within his reach, Oliver replied in the
affirmative.

" Then come with me," said Mrs. Sowerberry : taking up a dim and
dirty lamp, and leading the way up-stairs ; " your bed's under the
counter. You don't mind sleeping among the coffins, I suppose?
But it doesn't much matter whether you do or don't, for you can't sleep
anywhere else. Com© ; don't keep me here all night ! "

Oliver lingered no longer, but meekly followed his new mistress.

CHAPTER V.

oliver mingles with new associates. going to a funeral for
the first time, he forms an unfavourable notion op his
master's business.

Oliver, being left to himself in the undertaker's shop, set the lamp
down on a workman's bench, and gazed timidly about him with a
feeling of awe and dread, which many people a good deal older than
he, will be at no loss to understand. An unfinished coffin on black
tressels, which stood in the middle of the shop, looked so gloomy and
death-like that a cold tremble came over him, every time his eyes
wandered in the direction of the dismal object : from which he almost
expected to see some frightful form slowly rear its head, to drive him mad
with terror. Against the wall were ranged, in regnlar array, a long
row of elm boards cut into the same shape : looking in the dim light,
like high-shouldered ghosts with their hands in their breeches-pockets.
Coffin-plates, elm-chips, bright-headed nails, and shreds of black
cloth, lay scattered on the floor ; and the wall behind the counter was
ornamented with a lively representation of two mutes in very stiff
neckcloths, on duty at a large private door, with a hearse drawn by
four black steeds, approaching in the distance. The shop was close
and hot, The atmosphere seemed tainted with the smell of coffins.

30 Oliver Twist.

The recess beneath the counter in which his flock mattress was thrust,
looked like a grave.

Nor were these the only cHsmal feelings which depressed Oliver.
He was alone in a strange place ; and we all know how chilled and
desolate the best of us will sometimes feel in such a situation. The
boy had no friends to care for, or to care for him. The regret of no
recent separation was fresh in his mind ; the absence of no loved and
well-remembered face sank heavily into his heart. But his heart jp«s
heavy, notwithstanding ; and he wished, as he crept into his narrow
bed, that that were his coffin, and that he could be lain in a calm and
lasting sleep in the churchyard ground, with the tall grass waving
gently above his head, and the sound of the old deep bell to soothe
him in his sleep.

Oliver was awakened in the morning, by a loud kicking at the
outside of the shop-door : which, before he could huddle on his
clothes, was repeated, in an angry and impetuous manner, about
twenty-five times. When he began to undo the chain, the legs
desisted, and a voice began.

" Open the door, will yer ? " cried the voice which belonged to the
legs which had kicked at the door.

"I will, directly, sir," replied Oliver: undoing the chain, and
turning the key.

" I suppose yer the new boy, ain't yer ? " said the voice through the
key-hole.

" Yes, sir," replied Oliver.

" How old are yer ? " inquired the voice.

" Ten, sir," replied Oliver.

" Then I'll whop yer when I get in, " said the voice ; " you just see
if I don't, that's all, my work'us brat ! " and having made this obliging
promise, the voice began to whistle,

Oliver had been too often subjected to the process to which the
very expressive monosyllable just recorded bears reference, to enter-
tain the smallest doubt that the owner of the voice, whoever he might
be, would redeem his pledge, most honourably. He drew back the
bolts with a trembling hand, and opened the door.

For a second or two, Oliver glanced up the street, and down the
street, and over the way : impressed with the belief that the unknown,
who had addressed him through the key-hole, had walked a few paces
off, to warm himself ; for nobody did he see but a big charity-boy,
sitting on a post in front of the house, eating a slice of bread and
butter : which he cut into wedges, the size of his mouth, with a clasp-
knife, and then consumed with great dexterity.

" I beg your pardon, sir," said Oliver at length : seeing that no
other visitor made his appearance ; " did you knock ? "

" I kicked," replied the charity-boy.

** Did you want a coffin, sir ? " inquired Oliver, innocently.

At this the chaiity-boy looked monstroiis fierce ; and said that

Mr. Noah Claypole. 31

Oliver would want one before long, if he cut jokes with his superiors
in that way.

" Yer don't know who I am, I suppose, Work'us ? " said the charity-
boy, in continuation : descending from the top of the post, meanwhile,
with edifying gravity.

*' No, sir," rejoined Oliver.

" I'm Mister Noah Claypole," said the charity-boy, " and you're
under me. Take down the shutters, yer idle young ruffian ! " With
this, Mr. Claypole administered a kick to Oliver, and entered the shop
with a dignified air, which did him great credit. It is difficult for a
large-headed, small-eyed youth, of lumbering make and heavy coun-
tenance, to look dignified under any circumstances ; but it is more
especially so, when superadded to these personal attractions are a red
nose and yellow smalls.

Oliver, having taken down the shutters, and broken a pane of glass
in his efforts to stagger away beneath the weight of the first one to a
small court at the side of the house in which they were kept during
the day, was graciously assisted by Noah : who having consoled him
with the assurance that " he'd catch it," condescended to help him.
Mr. Sowerberry came down soon after. Shortly afterwards, Mrs.
Sowerberry appeared. Oliver having "caught it," in fulfilment of
Noah's prediction, followed that young gentleman down the stairs to
breakfast.

" Come near the fire, Noah," said Charlotte. " I saved a nice little
bit of bacon for you from master's breakfast. Oliver, shut that door
at Mister Noah's back, and take them bits that I've put out on the
cover of the bread-pan. There's your tea ; take it away to that box,
and drink it there, and make haste, for they'll want you to mind the
shop. D'ye hear ? "

" D'ye hear, Work'us ? " said Noah Claypole.

" Lor, Noah ! " said Charlotte, " what a rum creature you are !
Why don't you let the boy alone ? "

"Let him alone!" said Noah. "Why everybody lets him alone
enough, for the matter of that. Neither his father nor his mother
will ever interfere with him. All his relations let him have his own
way pretty well. Eh, Charlotte ? He ! he ! he ! "

" Oh, you queer soul ! " said Charlotte, bursting into a hearty laugh,
in which she was joined by Noah ; after which they both looked
scornfully at poor Oliver Twist, as he sat shivering on the box in the
coldest corner of the room, and ate the stale pieces which had been
specially reserved for him.

Noah was a charity-boy, but not a workhouse orphan. No chance-
child was he, for he could trace his genealogy all the way back to his
parents, who lived hard by ; his mother being a washerwoman, and
his father a drunken soldier, discharged with a wooden leg, and a
diurnal pension of twopence-halfpenny and an unstateable fraction.
The shop-boys in the neighbourhood had long been in the habit of

32 Oliver Twist.

branding Noah, in the public streets, with the ignominious epithets of
" leathers," " charity," and the like ; and Noah had borne them without
reply. But, now that fortune 'has cast in his way a nameless orphan,
at whom even the meanest could point the finger of scorn, he retorted
on him with interest. This affords charming food for contemplation.
It shows us what a beautiful thing human nature may be made to be ;
and how impartially the same amiable qualities are developed in the
finest lord and the dirtiest charity-boy.

Oliver had been sojourning at the undertaker's some three weeks
or a month. Mr. and Mrs. Sowerberry — the shop being shut up —
were taking their supper in the little back-parlour, when Mr. Sower-
berry, after several deferential glances at his wife, said,

" My dear " He was going to say more ; but, Mrs. Sowerberry

looking up, with a peculiarly unpropitious aspect, he stopped short.

" Well," said Mrs. Sowerberry, sharply.

" Nothing, my dear, nothing," said Mr. Sowerberry.

" Ugh, you brute ! " said Mrs. Sowerberry.

" Not at all, my dear," said Mr. Sowerberry humbly. " I thought
you didn't want to hear, my dear. I was only going to say "

" Oh, don't tell me what you were going to say," interposed Mrs.
Sowerberry. " I am nobody ; don't consult me, pray. 1 don't want
to intrude upon your secrets." As Mrs. Sowerberry said this, she
gave an hysterical laugh, which threatened violent consequences.

" But, my dear," said Sowerberry, " I want to ask your advice."

" No, no, don't ask mine," replied Mrs. Sowerberry, in an affecting
manner : " ask somebody else's." Here, there was another hysterical
laugh, which frightened Mr. Sowerberry very much. This is a very
common and much-approved matrimonial course of treatment, which
is often very effective. It at once reduced Mr. Sowerberry to begging,
as a special favour, to be allowed to say what Mrs. Sowerberry was
most curious to hear. After a short altercation of less than three
quarters of an hour's duration, the permission was most graciously
conceded.

" It's only about young Twist, my dear," said Mr. Sowerberry. " A
very good-looking boy, that, my dear."

" He need be, for he eats enough," observed the lady.

" There's an expression of melancholy in his face, my dear," resumed
Mr. Sowerberry, "which is very interesting. He would make a
delightful mute, my love."

Mrs. Sowerberry looked up with an expression of considerable
wonderment. Mr. Sowerberry remarked it ; and, without allowing
time for any observation on the good lady's part, proceeded,

" I don't mean a regular mute to attend grown-up people, my dear,
but only for children's practice. It would bo very new to have a mute
in proportion, my dear. You may depend upon it, it would have a
s'lperb effect."

Mrs. Sowerberry, who had a good deal of taste in the tmdertaking

New Idea in the Undertaking Way. 33

way, was much struck by the novelty of this idea ; but, as it would
have been compromising her dignity to have said so, under existing
circumstances, she merely inquired, with much sharpness, why such an
obvious suggestion had not presented itself to her husband's mind
before? Mr. Sowerberry rightly construed this, as an acquiescence
in his proposition ; it was speedily determined, therefore, that Oliver
should bo at once initiated into the mysteries of the trade ; and, with
this view, that he should accompany his master on the very next
occasion of his services being required.

The occasion was not long in coming. Half-an-hour after breakfast
next morning, Mr. Bumble entered the shop ; and supporting his
cane against the counter, drew forth his large leathern pocket-book :
from which he selected a small scrap of paper, which he handed over
to Sowerberry.

" Aha I " said the undertaker, glancing over it with a lively counte-
nance ; " an order for a coffin, eh ? "

" For a coffin first, and a porochial funeral afterwards," replied Mr.
Bumble, fastening the strap of the leathern pocket-book : which, like
himself, was very corpulent.

" Bayton," said the undertaker, looking from the scrap of paper to
Mr. Bumble. " I never heard the name before."

Bumble shook his head, as he replied, "Obstinate people, Mr.
Sowerberry ; very obstinate. Proud, too, I'm afraid, sir."

" Proud, eh ? " exclaimed Mr. Sowerberry with a sneer. " Come,
that's too much."

" Oh, it's sickening," replied the beadle. " Antimonial, Mr. Sower-
berry ! "

" So it is," acquiesced the undertaker.

"We only heard of the family the night before last," said the
beadle ; " and we shouldn't have known anything about them, then,
only a woman who lodges in the same house made an application to
the porochial committee for them to send the porochial surgeon to see
a woman as was very bad. He had gone out to dinner; but his
'prentice (which is a very clever lad) sent 'em some medicine in a
blacking-bottle, off-hand."

" Ah, there's promptness," said the undertaker.

" Promptness, indeed ! " replied the beadle. " But what's the con-
sequence ; what's the ungrateful behaviour of these rebels, sir ? Why,
the husband sends back word that the medicine won't suit his wife's
complaint, and so she shan't take it — says she shan't take it, sir!
Good, strong, wholesome medicine, as was given with great success to
two Irish labourers and a coal-heaver, only a week before — sent 'em
for nothing, with a blackin'-bottle in, — and he sends back word that
she shan't take it, sir ! "

As the atrocity presented itself to Mr. Bumble's mind in full force,
he struck the counter sharply with his cane, and became flushed with
indignation.

34 Oliver Twist.

" Well," said the undertaker, " I ne — ver— did "

" Never did, sir ! " ejaculated the beadle. " No, nor nobody never
did ; but, now she's dead, we've got to bury her ; and that's the
direction ; and the sooner it's done, the better."

Thus saying, Mr. Bumble put on his cocked hat wrong side first, in
a fever of parochial excitement ; and flounced out of the shop.

" Why, he was so angry, Oliver, that he forgot even to ask after
you ! " said Mr. Sowerberry, looking after the beadle as he strode
down the street.

"Yes, sir," replied Oliver, who had carefully kept himself out of
sight, during the interview ; and who Avas shaking from head to foot
at the mere recollection of the sound of Mr. Bumble's voice. He
needn't have taken the trouble to shrink from Mr. Bumble's glance,
however ; for that functionary, on whom the prediction of the gentle-
man in the white waistcoat had made a very strong impression, thought
that now the undertaker had got Oliver upon trial the subject was
better avoided, until such time as he should be firmly bound for seven
years, and all danger of his being returned upon the hands of the
parish should be thus eftectually and legally overcome.

" Well," said Mr. Sowerberry, taking up his hat, ' ' the sooner this
job is done, the better. Noah, look after the shop. Oliver, put on
your cap, and come with me." Oliver obeyed, and followed his master
on his professional mission.

They walked on, for some time, through the most crowded and
densely inhabited part of the town ; and then, striking down a narrow
street more dirty and miserable than any they had yet passed through,
paused to look for the house which was the object of their search.
The houses on either side were high and large, but very old, and
tenanted by people of the poorest class : as theii- neglected appearance
would have sufficiently denoted, without the concurrent testimony
afforded by the squalid looks of the few men and women who, with
folded arms and bodies half doubled, occasionally skulked along. A
great many of the tenements had shop-fronts; but these were fast
closed, and mouldering away ; only the upper rooms being inhabited.
Some houses which had become insecure from age and decay, M'ere
prevented from falling into the street, by huge beams of wood reared
against the walls, and firmly planted in the road ; but even these
crazy dens seemed to have been selected as the nightly haunts of some
houseless wretches, for many of the rough boards which supplied the
place of door and window, were wrenched from their positions, to
afford an aperture wide enough for the passage of a human body.
The kennel was stagnant and filthy. The very rats, which here and
there lay putrefying in its rottenness, were hideous with famine.

There was neither knocker nor bell-handle at the open door where
Oliver and his master stopped ; so, groping his way cautiously through
the dark passage, and bidding Oliver keep close to him and not be
afraid, the undertaker mounted to the top of the first flight of stairs.

Thankless Pauperism. 35

Stumbling against a door on tlio landing, he rapped at it with his
knuckles.

It was opened by a yonng girl of thirteen or fourteen. The under-
taker at once saw enough of what the room contained, to know it was
the apartment to which he had been directed. He stopped in ; Oliver
followed him.

There was no fire in the room ; but a man was crouching,
mechanically, over the empty stove. An old woman, too, had drawn
a low stool to the cold hearth, and was sitting beside him. There
were some ragged children in another corner ; and in a small recess,
opposite the door, there lay upon tlie ground, something covered with
an old blanket. Oliver shuddered as he cast his eyes towards the
l)lace, and crept involuntarily closer to his master ; for though it was
covered up, the boy felt that it was a corpse.

The man's face was thin and very pale ; his hair and beard were
grizzly; his eyes were bloodshot. The old woman's face was
wrinkled ; her two remaining teeth protruded over her under lip ;
and her eyes were bright and piercing. Oliver was afraid to look at
either her or the man. They seemed so like the rats he had seen
outside.

" Nobody shall go near her," said the man, starting fiercely up, as
the undertaker approached the recess. " Keep back ! Damn you,
keep back, if you've a life to lose ! "

" Nonsense, my good man," said the undertaker, who was pretty
well used to misery in all its shapes. " Nonsense ! "

" I tell you," said the man : clenching his hands, and stamping
furiously on the floor, — "I tell you I won't have her put into the
ground. She couldn't rest there. The worms would worry her — not
eat her — she is so worn away."

Tbe undertaker ofiered no reply to this raving ; but producing a
tape from his pocket, knelt down for a moment by the side of the
body.

" Ah ! " said the man : bursting into tears, and sinking on his knees
at the feet of the dead woman ; " kneel down, kneel down — kneel
round her, every one of you, and mark my words ! I say she was
starved to death. I never knew how bad she was, till the fever came
upon her ; and then her bones were starting through the skin. There
was neither fire nor candle ; she died in the dark — in the dark ! She
couldn't even see her children's faces, though we heard her gasping
out their names. I begged for her in the streets : and they sent me
to prison. When I came back, she was dying ; and all the blood in
my heart has dried up, for they starved her to death. I swear it
before the God that saw it ! They starved her ! " He twined his
hands in his hair ; and, with a loud scream, rolled grovelling upon
the floor : his eyes fixed, and the foam covering his lips.

The terrified children cried bitterly ; but the old woman, who had
hitherto remained as ^uiet as if she had been wholly deaf to all that

36 Oliver Twist,

passed, menaced them into silence. Having unloosened the cravat of
the man who still remained extended on the ground, she tottered
towards the undertaker.

" She was my daughter," said the old woman, nodding her head in
the direction of the corpse ; and speaking with an idiotic leer, more
ghastly than even the presence of death in such a place. "Lord,
Lord ! Well, it is strange that I who gave birth to her, and was a
woman then, should be alive and merry now, and she lying there : so
cold and stiff ! Lord, Lord ! — to think of it ; it's as good as a play —
as good as a play ! "

As the wretched creature mumbled and chuckled in her hideous
merriment, the undertaker turned to go away.

" Stop, stop ! " said the old woman in a loud whisper. " Will she
be buried to-morrow, or next day, or to-night ? I laid her out ; and
I must walk, yon know. Send me a large cloak : a good warm one :
for it is bitter cold. We should have cake and wine, too, before we
go ! Never mind ; send some bread — only a loaf of bread and a
cup of water. Shall we have some bread, dear ? " she said eagerly :
catching at the undertaker's coat, as he once more moved towards the
door.

" Yes, yes," said the undertaker, " of course. Anything you like ! "
He disengaged himself from the old woman's grasp ; and, drawing
Oliver after him, hurried away.

The next day, (the family having been meanwhile relieved with a
half-quartern loaf and a piece of cheese, left with them by Mr. Bumble
himself,) Oliver and his master returned to the miserable abode ;
where Mr. Bumble had already arrived, accompanied by four men
from the workhouse, who were to act as bearers. An old black cloak
had been thrown over the rags of the old Avoman and the man ; and
the bare coffin having been screwed do^Ti, was hoisted on the shoulders
of the bearers, and carried into the street.

" Now, you must put your best leg foremost, old lady ! " whispered
Sowerberry in the old woman's ear ; " we are rather late ; and it
won't do, to keep the clergyman waiting. Move on, my men, — as
quick as you like !

Thus directed, the bearers trotted on under their light burden ;
and the two mourners kept as near them, as they could. Mr. Bumble
and Sowerberry walked at a good smart pace in front ; and Oliver,
whose legs were not so long as his master's, ran by the side.

There was not so great a necessity for hurrying as Mr. Sowerberry
had anticipated, however ; for when they reached the obscure corner
of the churchyard in which the nettles grew, and where the parish
graves were made, the clergyman had not arrived ; and the clerk, who
was sitting by the vestry-room fire, seemed to think it by no means
improbable that it might be an hour or so, before he came. So, they
put the bier on the brink of the grave ; and the two mourners waited
patiently in the damp clay, with a cold rain drizzling down, while the

A Pauper Funeral. 37

ragged boys whom the siJectacle had attracted into the churchyard
played a noisy game at hide-and-seek among the tombstones, or varied
their amusements by jumping backwards and forwards over the coffin.
Mr. Sowerberry and Bumble, being personal friends of the clerk, sat
by the fire with him, and read the paper.

' At length, after a lapse of something moi*e than an hour, Mr. Bumble,
and Sowerberry, and the clerk, were seen running towards tlie grave.
Immediately afterwards, the clergyman appeared : putting on liis
surplice as he came along. Mr. Bumble then thrashed a boy or two,
to keep up appearances ; and the reverend gentleman, having read as
much of the burial service as could be compressed into four minutes,
gave his suriilice to the clerk, and walked away again.

" Now, Bill ! " said Sowerberry to the grave-digger. " Fill up ! "

It was no very difficult task ; for the grave was so full, that the
uppermost coffin was within a few feet of the surface. The grave-
digger shovelled in the earth ; stamped it loosely down with his feet ;
shouldered his spade ; and walked off, followed by the boys, who
murmured very loud complaints at the fun being over so soon.

" Come, my good fellow ! " said Bumble, tapping the man on the
back. " They want to shut up the yard."

The man who had never once moved, since he had taken his station
by the grave side, started, raised his head, stared at the person who
had addressed him, walked forward for a few paces ; and fell down in
a swoon. The crazy old woman was too much occupied in bewailing
the loss of her cloak (which the undertaker had taken off), to pay him
any attention ; so they threw a can of cold water over him ; and when
he came to, saw him safely out of the churchyard, locked the gate,
and departed on their different ways.

" Well, Oliver," said Sowerberry, as they walked home, " how do
you like it ? "

"Pretty well, thank you, sir," replied Oliver, with considerable
hesitation. " Not very much, sir."

"Ah, you'll get used to it in time, Oliver," said Sowerberrry.
" Nothing when you are used to it, my boy."

Oliver wondered, in his own mind, whether it had taken a very
long time to get Mr. Sowerberry used to it. But ho thought it better
not to ask the question ; and walked back to the shop : thinking over
all he had seen and heard.

CHAPTEE VI.

OLIVEB, BEINJ GOADED BY THE TAUNTS OF NOAH, ROUSKS INTO ACTION,
AND BATHER ASTONISHES HIM. ,

The mouth's trial OTer, Oliver was formally apprenticed. It was a
nice sickly season just at tliis time. In commercial phrase, coffins
were looking up ; and, in the course of a few weeks, Oliver acquired
a great deal of experience. The success of Mr. Sowerberry's ingenious
speculation, exceeded even his most sanguine hopes. The oldest in-
habitants recollected no period at which measles had been so prevalent,
or so fatal to infant existence; and many were the mournful pro-
cessions which little Oliver headed, in a hat-band reaching down to
his knees, to the indescribable admiration and emotion of all the
1. others in the town. As Oliver accompanied his master in most of
hij adult expeditions, too, in order that he might acquire that equanimity
of demeanour and full command of nerve which are essential to a
finished undertaker, he had many opportunities of observing the
beautiful resignation and fortitude with which some strong-minded
people bear their trials and losses.

For instance ; when Sowerberry had an order for the burial of some
rich old lady or gentleman, who was surrounded by a great number
of nephews and nieces, who had been perfectly inconsolable during
the previous illness, and whose grief had been wholly irrepressible
even on the most public occasions, they would bo as happy among
themselves as need be — quite cheerful and contented — conversing
together with as much freedom and gaiety, as if nothing whatever had
happened to disturb them. Husbands, too, bore the loss of their
wives with the most heroic calmness. Wives, again, put on weeds
for their husbands, as if, so far from grieving in the garb of sorrow,
they had made up their minds to render it as becoming and attractive
as possible. It was observable, too, that ladies and gentlemen who
were in passions of anguish during the ceremony of interment,
recovered almost as soon as they reached home, and became quite
composed before the tea-drinking was over. All this was very
pleasant and improving to see; and Oliver beheld it with great
admiration.

That Oliver Twist was moved to resignation by the example of
these good people, I cannot, although I am his biographer, undertake
to affirm with any degree of confidence ; but I can most distinctly say,
that for many months he continued meekly to submit to the domina-
nation and ill-treatment of Noah Clayjiole : who used him far worse
than before, now that his jealousy was roused by seeing the new boy
promoted to the black stick and hat-band, while he, the old one,
remained stationary in the muffin-cap and leathers. Charlotte treated

Personalities. 39

him ill, because Noah did; and Mrs. Sowerbcrry was his decided
enemy, because Mr. Sowerberry was disposed to be his friend; so,
between these three on one side, and a glut of funerals on the other,
Oliver was not altogether as comfortable as the hungry pig was, when
he was shut up, by mistake, in the grain department of a brewery.

And now, I come to a very important passage in Oliver's history ;
for I have to record an act, slight and unimportant perhaps in appear-
ance, but which indirectly produced a material change in all his
future prospects and proceedings.

One day, Oliver and Noah had descended into the kitchen at the
usual dinner-hour, to banquet upon a small joint of mutton — a pound
and a half of the worst end of the neck — when Charlotte being called
out of the way, there ensued a brief interval of time, which Noah
Claypole, being hungry and vicious, considered he could not possibly
devote to a worthier purpose than aggi-avating and tantalising young
Oliver Twist.

Intent upon this innocent amusement, Noah put his feet on the
table-cloth ; and pulled Oliver's hair ; and twitched his ears ; and
expressed his opinion that he was a " sneak ; " and furthermore
announced his intention of coming to see him hanged, whenever that
desirable event should take place; and entered upon various other
topics of petty annoyance, like a malicious and ill-conditioned charity-
boy as he was. But, none of these taunts producing the desired effect
of making Oliver cry, Noah attempted to be more facetious still ; and
in this attempt, did what many small wits, with far greater reputations
than Noah, sometimes do to this day, when they want to be funny.
He got rather personal.

" Work'us," said Noah, " how's your mother ? "

" She's dead," replied Oliver ; " don't you say anything about her
to me ! "

Oliver's colour rose as he said this; he breathed quickly; and
there was a curious working of the mouth and nostrils, which Mr.
Claypole thought must be the immediate precursor of a violent fit of
crying. Under this impression he returned to the charge.

« What did she die of, Work'us ? " said Noah.

" Of a broken heart, some of our old nurses told me," replied Oliver :
more as if he were talking to himself, than answering Noah. " I think
I know what it must be to die of that 1 "

" Tol de rol lol lol, right fol lairy, Work'us," said Noah, as a tear
rolled down Oliver's cheek. " What's set you a snivelling now ? "

" Not yoxi" replied Oliver, hastily brushing the tear away. " Don't
think it.'"'

" Oh, not me, eh 1 " sneered Noah.

" No, not you," replied Oliver, sharply. " There ; that's enough.
Don't say anything more to me about her ; you'd better not ! "

" Better not ! " exclaimed Noah. " Well ! Better not I Work'us,
don't be impudent. Your mother, too ! She was a nice 'un, she was.

4d Oliver Twist.

Oh, Loi- 1 '" And here, Noah nodded his head expressively ; ftn4
curled up as much of his small red nose as muscular action could
collect together, for the occasion.

"Yer know, Work'us," continued Noah, emboldened by Oliver's
silence, and speaking in a jeering tone of affected pity : of all tones
the most annoying: "Yer know, Work'us, it can't be helped now;
and of course yer couldn't help it then ; and I am very sorry for it ;
and I'm sure we all are, and pity yer very much. But yer must
know, Work'us, yer mother was a regular right-down bad 'uu."

" What did you say ? " inquired Oliver, looking up very quickly.

"A regular right-down bad 'un, Work'us," replied Noah, coolly.
" And it's a great deal better, Work'us, that she died when she did,
or else she'd have been hard labouring in Bridewell, or transported,
or hung ; which is more likely than either, isn't it ? "

Crimson with fury, Oliver started iip ; overthrew the chair and
table ; seized Noah by the throat ; shook him, in the violence of his
rage, till his teeth chattered in his head ; and, collecting his whole
force into one heavy blow, felled him to the ground.

A minute ago, the boy had looked the quiet, mild, dejected creature
that harsh treatment had made him. But his spirit was roused at
last; the cruel insult to his dead mother had set his blood on fire.
His breast heaved ; his attitude was erect ; his eye bright and vivid ;
his whole person changed, as he stood glaring over the cowardly
tormentor who now lay crouching at his feet ; and defied him with an
energy he had never known before.

" He'll murder me ! " blubbered Noah. " Charlotte ! missis ! Here's
the new boy a murdering of me ! Help ! help ! Oliver's gone mad !
Char— lotte ! "

Noah's shouts were responded to, by a loud scream from Charlotte,
and a louder from Mrs. Sowerberry ; the former of whom rushed into
the kitchen by a side-door, while the latter paused on the staircase till
she was quite certain that it was consistent with the preservation of
human life, to come further down.

" Oh, you little wretch ! " screamed Charlotte : seizing Oliver with
her utmost force, which was about equal to that of a moderately strong
man in particularly good training, " Oh, you little un-grate-ful,
mur-de-rous, hor-rid villain ! " And between every syllable, Charlotte
gave Oliver a blow with all her might : accompanying it with a scream,
for the benefit of society.

Charlotte's fist was by no means a light one ; but, lest it should
not be effectual in calming Oliver's wrath, Mrs. Sowerberry plunged
into the kitchen, and assisted to hold him with one hand, while she
scratched his face with the other. In this favourable position of
affairs, Noah rose from the ground, and pommelled him behind.

This was rather too violent exercise to last long. When they were
all wearied out, and could tear and beat no longer, they dragged
Oliver, struggling and shouting, but nothing daunted, into the dust- ,

^^^^«<^^;/^^^/6/^^^z^ ^^^j^^<^

Murder f 4t

Cellar, and there locked him up. This being done, Mrs. Sowerberry
sunk into a chair, and burst into tears.

" Bless her, she's going off ! " said Charlotte. " A glass of water,
Noah, dear. Make haste ! "

" Oh ! Charlotte," said Mrs. Sowerberry : speaking as well as sho
could, through a deficiency of breath, and a sufficiency of cold water,
which Noah had poured over her head and shoulders. " Oh ! Charlotte,
what a mercy we have not all been murdered in our beds 1 "

" Ah ! mercy indeed, ma'am," was the reply. " I only hope this'U
teach master not to have any more of these dreadful creaturs, that are
born to be murderers and robbers from their very cradle. Poor Noah !
He was all but killed, ma'am, when I come in."

"Poor fellow!" said Mrs. Sowerberry: looking piteously on the
charity-boy.

Noah, whose top waistcoat-button might have been somewhere on a
level with the crown of Oliver's head, rubbed his eyes with the inside
of his wrists while this commiseration was bestowed upon him, and
performed some affecting tears and sniffs.

" What's to be done ! " exclaimed Mrs. Sowerberry. " Your master's
not at home ; there's not a man in the house, and he'll kick that door
down in ten minutes." Oliver's vigorous plunges against the bit of
timber in question, rendered this occurrence highly probable.

" Dear, dear ! I don't know, ma'am," said Charlotte, " unless we
send for the police-officers."

" Or the millingtary," suggested Mr. Claypole.

" No, no," said Mrs. Sowerberry : bethinking herself of Oliver's old
friend. " Eun to Mr. Bumble, Noah, and tell him to come here
directly, and not to lose a minute ; never mind your cap ! Make
haste ! You can hold a knife to that black eye, as you run along.
It'll keep the swelling down."

Noah stopped to make no reply, but started off at his fullest speed ;
and very much it astonished the people who were out walking, to see
a charity-boy tearing through the streets pell-mell, with no cap on his
head, and a clasp-knife at his eye.

CHAPTEK VII.

OLIVEB CONTINUES REPBACTOBY.

NoAH Claypole ran along the streets at his swiftest pace, and paused
not once for breath, until he reached the workhouse-gate. Having
rested here, for a minute or so, to collect a good burst of sobs and an
imposing show of tears and terror, he knocked loudly at the wicket ;
and presented such a rueful face to the aged pauper who opened it.

42 Oliver Tzvisf.

that even he, who saw nothing but raefal faces about him at the best
of times, started back in astonishment.

" Why, what's the matter with the boy ! " said the old pauper.

" Mr, Bumble ! Mr. Bumble ! " cried Noah, with well-affected
dismay : and in tones so loud and agitated, that they not only caught
the ear of Mr. Bumble himself, who happened to be hard by, but
alarmed him so much that he rushed into the yard without his cocked
hat, — which is a very curious and remarkable circumstance : as
showing that even a beadle, acted upon by a sudden and powerful
impulse, may be afflicted with a momentary visitation of loss of self-
possession, and forgetfulness of personal dignity.

" Oh, Mr. Bumble, sir ! " said Noah : " Oliver, sir, — Oliver has "

"What? What?" interposed Mr. Bumble: with a gleam of
pleasure in his metallic eyes. " Not run away ; he hasn't run away,
has he, Noah ? "

" No, sir, no. Not run away, sir, but he's turned wicious," replied
Noah. " He tried to murder me, sir ; and then he tried to murder
Charlotte ; and then missis. Oh ! what dreadful pain it is ! Such
agony, please, sir ! " And here, Noah writhed and twisted his body
into an extensive variety of eel-like positions ; thereby giving Mr.
Bumble to understand that, from the violent and sanguinary onset of
Oliver Twist, he had sustained severe internal injury and damage,
from which he was at that moment suffering the acutest torture.

When Noah saw that the intelligence he communicated perfectly
paralysed Mr. Bumble, he imparted addititional effect thereunto, by
bewailing his dreadful wounds ten times louder than before; and
when he observed a gentleman in a white waistcoat crossing the yard,
he was more tragic in his lamentations than ever : rightly conceiving
it highly expedient to attract the notice, and rouse the indignation, of
the gentleman aforesaid.

The gentleman's notice was very soon attracted ; for he had not
walked three paces, when he turned angrily round, and inquired what
that young cur was howling for, and why Mr. Bumble did not favour
him with something which would render the series of vocular ex-
clamations so designated, an involuntary process ?

"It's a poor boy from the free-school, sir," replied Mr. Bumble,
" who has been nearly murdered — all but murdered, sir, — by young
Twist."

" By Jove ! " exclaimed the gentleman in the white waistcoat,
stopping short. " I knew it ! I felt a strange presentiment from the
very first, that that audacious young savage would come to be hung ! "

"He has likewise attempted, sir, to murder the female servant,"
said Mr. Bumble, with a face of ashy paleness.

" And his missis," interposed Mr. Claypole.

" And his master, too, I think you said, Noah ? " added Mr. Bumble.

" No ! he's out, or he would have murdered him," replied Noah.
" He said he wanted to."

Mischievous Effects of Meat. 43

*' Ah ! Said he wanted to, did he, my boy ? " inquired the gentle-
man in the white waistcoat.

" Yes, sir," replied Noah. " And please, sir, missis wants to know
whether Mr. Bumble can spare time to step np there, directly, and
flog him — 'cause master's out."

" Certainly, my boy ; certainly," said the gentleman in the white
waistcoat : smiling benignly, and patting Noah's head, which was
about three inches higher than his own. " You're a good boy — a very
good boy. Here's a penny for you. Bumble, just step up to Sower-
berry's ^vith your cane, and see what's best to be done. Bon't spare
him. Bumble."

" No, I will not, sir," replied the beadle : adjusting the wax-end
which was twisted round the bottom of his cane, for purposes of
parochial flagellation.

" Tell Sowerberry not to spare him either. They'll never do any-
thing with him, without stripes and bmises," said the gentleman in
the white waistcoat.

" I'll take care, sir," replied the beadle. And the cocked hat and
cane having been, by this time, adjusted to their owner's satisfaction,
Mr. Bumble and Noah Claypole betook themselves with all speed to
the undertaker's shop.

Here the position of affairs had not at all improved. Sowerberry
had not yet returned, and Oliver continued to kick, with undiminished
vigour, at the cellar-door. The accounts of his ferocity as related by
Mrs. Sowerberry and Charlotte, were of so startling a nature, that
Mr. Bumble judged it prudent to parley, before opening the door.
With this view he gave a kick at the outside, by way of prelude ; and,
then, applying his mouth to the keyhole, said, in a deep and impressive
tone:

« Oliver ! "

" Come ; you let me out ! " replied Oliver, from the inside.

" Do you know this here voice, Oliver ? " said Mr. Bumble.

" Yes," replied Oliver.

" Ain't you afraid of it, sir ? Ain't you a-trembling while I speak,
sir ? " said Mr. Bumble.

" No ! " replied Oliver, boldly.

An answer so different from the one he had expected to elicit, and
was in the habit of receiving, staggered Mr. Bumble not a little. He
stepped back from the keyhole ; drew himself up to his fall height ;
and looked from one to another of the three bystanders, in mute
astonishment.

" Oh, you know, Mr. Bumble, he must be mad," said Mrs. Sower-
berry. " No boy in half his senses could venture to speak so to yon."

"It's not Madness, ma'am," replied Mr. Bumble, after a few
moments of deep meditation. " It's Meat."

" What ? " exclaimed Mrs. Sowerberry.

"Meat, ma'am, meat," replied Bumble, with stern emphasis.

44 Oliver Twist.

" YouVo over-fed him, ma'am. You've raised a artificial soul and
spirit in him, ma'am, unbecoming a person of his condition : as the
board, Mrs. Sowerberry, who are practical philosophers, will tell you.
What have paupers to do with soul or spirit ? It's quite enough that
we let 'om have live bodies. If you had kept the boy on gruel,
ma'am, this would never have happened."

" Dear, dear ! " ejaculated Mrs. Sowerberry, piously raising her
eyes to the kitchen ceiling : " this comes of being liberal ! "

The liberality of Mrs. Sowerberry to Oliver, had consisted in a
profuse bestowal upon him of all the dirty odds and ends which
nobody else would eat ; so there was a great deal of meekness and
self-devotion in her voluntarily remaining under Mr. Bumble's heavy
accusation. Of which, to do her justice, she was wholly innocent, in
thought, word, or deed.

" Ah ! " said Mr. Bumble, when the lady brought her eyes down to
earth again ; " the only thing that can be done now, that I know of,
is to leave him in the cellar for a day or so, till he's a little starved
down ; and then to take him out, and keep him on gruel all through
his apprenticeship. He comes of a bad family. Excitable natures,
Mrs. Sowerberry ! Both the nurse and doctor said, that that mother
of his made her way here, against difficulties and pain that would
have killed any well-disposed woman, weeks before."

At this point of Mr. Bumble's discourse, Oliver, just hearing
enough to know that some new allusion was being made to his mother,
recommenced kicking, with a violence that rendered every other
sound inaudible. Sowerberry returned at this juncture. Oliver's
offence having been explained to him, with such exaggerations as the
ladies thought best calculated to rouse his ire, he unlocked the cellar-
door in a twinkling, and dragged his rebellious apprentice out, by
the collar.

Oliver's clothes had been torn in the beating he had received ; his
face was bruised and scratched ; and his hair scattered over his fore-
head. The angry flush had not disappeared, however ; and when he
was pulled out of his prison, he scowled boldly on Noah, and looked
quite undismayed.

" Now, you are a nice young fellow, ain't you ? " said Sowerberry ;
giving Oliver a shake, and a box on the ear.

" He called my mother names," replied Oliver.

" Well, and what if he did, you little ungrateful wretch ? " said Mrs.
Sowerberry. " She deserved what he said, and worse."

" She didn't," said Oliver.

" She did," said Mrs. Sowerberry.

« It's a lie ! " said Oliver.

Mrs. Sowerberry burst into a flood of tears.

This flood of tears left Mr. Sowerberry no alternative. If he had
hesitated for one instant to punish Oliver most severely, it must be
quite clear to every experienced reader that ho would have beePj

Flight from the Undertaker's. 45

according to all precedents in disputes of matrimony established,
a brute, an unnatural husband, an insulting creature, a base imitation
of a man, and various other agreeable characters too numerous for
recital within the limits of this chapter. To do him justice, he was,
as far as his poM'cr went — it was not very extensive — kindly disposed
towards the boy ; perhaps, because it was his interest to be so ;
perhaps, because his wife disliked him. The flood of tears, however,
left him no resource ; so he at once gave him a drubbing, which
satisfied even Mrs. Sowerberry herself, and rendered Mr. Bumble's
subsequent application of the parochial cane, rather unnecessary. For
the rest of the day, he was shut up in the back kitchen, in company
with a pump and a slice of bread ; and, at night, Mrs. Sowerberry,
after making various remarks outside the door, by no means com-
plimentary to the memory of his mother, looked into the room, and,
amidst the jeers and pointings of Noah and Charlotte, ordered him
up-staii"6 to his dismal bed.

It was not until he was left alone in the silence and stillness of
the gloomy workshop of the undertaker, that Oliver gave way to the
feelings which the day's treatment may be supposed likely to have
awakened in a mere child. He had listened to their taunts with a
look of contempt ; he had borne the lash without a cry : for he felt
that pride swelling in his heart which would have kept down a
shriek to the last, though they had roasted him alive. But now, when
there were none to see or hear him, he fell upon his knees on the floor ;
and, hiding his face in his hands, wept such tears as, God send for the
credit of our nature, few so young may ever have cause to pour out
before him !

For a long time, Oliver remained motionless in this attitude. The
candle was burning low in the socket when he rose to his feet.
Having gazed cautiously round him, and listened intently, he gently
undid the fastenings of the door, and looked abroad.

It was a cold, dark night. The stars seemed, to the boy's eyes,
farther from the earth than he had ever seen them before ; there was
no wind ; and the sombre shadows thrown by the trees upon the
ground, looked sepulchral and death-like, from being so still. He
softly reclosed the door. Having availed himself of the expiring light of
the candle to tie up in a handkerchief the few articles of wearing apparel
he had, sat himself down upon a bench, to wait for morning.

With the first ray of light that struggled through the crevices in
the shutters, Oliver arose, and again unbarred the door. One timid
look around — one moment's pause of hesitation — he had closed it
behind him, and was in the open street.

He looked to the right and to the left, uncertain whither to fly.
He remembered to have seen the waggons, as they went out, toiling
up the hill. He took the same route ; and arriving at a footpath
across the fields : which he knew, after some distance, led out again
into the road : stnick into it, and walked quickly on.

46 Oliver Twist,

Along this same footpath, Oliver well remembered he had trotted
beside Mr. Bumble, when he first carried him to the workhouse from
the farm. His way lay directly in front of the cottage. His heart
beat quickly when he bethought himself of this ; and he half resolved
to turn back. He had come a long way though, and should loso
a great deal of time by doing so. Besides, it was so early that there
was very little fear of his being seen ; so he walked on.

He reached the house. There was no appearance of its inmates
stirring at that early hour. Oliver stopped, and peeped into the
garden. A child was weeding one of the little beds ; as he stopped,
he raised his pale face and disclosed the features of one of his former
companions, Oliver felt glad to see him, before he went ; for, though
younger than himself, ho had been his little friend and playmate.
They had been beaten, and starved, and shut up together, many and
many a time.

" Hush, Dick ! " said Oliver, as the boy ran to the gate, and thrust
his thin arm between the rails to greet him. " Is anyone up ? "

" Nobody but me," replied the child.

" You mustn't say you saw me, Dick," said Oliver. " I am running
away. They beat and ill-use me, Dick ; and I am going to seek my
fortune, some long way off. I don't know where. How pale you are ! "

" I heard the doctor tell them I was dying," replied the child with
a faint smile. "I am very glad to see you, dear; but don't stop,
don't stop ! "

"Yes, yes, I will, to say good-b'ye to you," replied Oliver. "I
shall see you again, Dick. I know I shall ! You will be well and
happy ! "

" I hope so," replied the child. " After I am dead, but not before.
I know the doctor must be right, Oliver, because I di-eam so much of
Heaven, and Angels, and kind faces that I never see when I am awake.
Kiss me," said the child, climbing up the low gate, and flinging his
little arms round Oliver's neck. " Good-b'ye, dear ! God bless
you!"

The blessing was from a young child's lips, but it was the first that
Oliver had ever heard invoked upon his head; and through the
struggles and suffeiings, and troubles and changes, of his after life, he
never once forgot it.

CHAPTER VIIL

OUVER WALKS TO LONDON. HE ENCOUNTERS ON THE ROAD A STRANGE
SORT OF YOUNG GENTLEMAN.

Oliver reached the stile at which the by-path terminated ; and once
more gained the high-road. It was eight o'clock now. Though he
was nearly five miles away from the town, he ran, and hid behind the
hedges, by turns, till noon : fearing that he might be pursued and
overtaken. Then he sat down to rest by the side of the milestone,
and began to think, for the first time, where he had better go and try
to live.

The stone by which he was seated, bore, in large characters, an
intimation that it was just seventy miles from that spot to London.
The name awakened a new train of ideas in the boy's mind. London !
— that great largo place! — nobody — not even Mr. Bumble — could
ever find him there ! He had often heard the old men in the work-
house, too, say that no lad of spirit need want in London ; and that
there were ways of living in that vast city, which those who had been
bred up in country parts had no idea of. It was the very place for a
homeless boy, who must die in the streets unless some one helped
him. As these things passed through his thoughts, he jumped upon
his feet, and again walked forward.

He had diminished the distance between himself and London by
full four miles more, before he recollected how much he must undergo
ere he could hope to reach his place of destination. As this con-
sideration forced itself upon him, he slackened his pace a little, and
meditated upon his means of getting there. He had a crust of bread,
a coai-se shirt, and two pairs of stockings, in his bundle. He had
a penny too — a gift of Sowerberry's after some funeral in which he
had acquitted himself more than ordinarily well — in his pocket.
" A clean shirt," thought Oliver, " is a very comfortable thing ; and
so are two pairs of darned stockings ; and so is a penny ; but they are
small helps to a sixty-five miles' walk in winter time." But Oliver's
thoughts, like those of most other people, although they were
extremely ready and active to point out his difficulties, were wholly
at a loss to suggest any feasible mode of surmounting them ; so, after
a good deal of thinking to no particular purpose, he changed his
little bundle over to the other shoulder, and trudged on.

Oliver walked twenty miles that day ; and all that time- tasted
nothing but the crust of dry bread, and a few draughts of water,
which he begged at the cottage-doors by the road-side. When the
night came, he turned into a meadow ; and, creeping close under
a hay-rick, determined to lie there, till morning. He felt frightened
at first, for the wind moane4 dism^ll^ over the empty fields : and he

48 Oliver Twist.

was cold and hungry, and more alone than he had ever felt before.
Being very tired with his walk, however, he soon fell asleep and
forgot his troubles.

He felt cold and stiff, when he got up next morning, and so hungry
that he was obliged to exchange the penny for a small loaf, in the
very first village through which he passed. He had walked no more
than twelve miles, when night closed in again. His feet were sore,
and his legs so weak that they trembled beneath him. Another night
passed in the bleak damp air, made him worse ; when he set forward
on his journey next morning, he could hardly crawl along.

He waited at the bottom of a steep hill till a stage-coach came up,
and then begged of the outside passengers ; but there were very few
who took any notice of him : and even those told him to wait till
they got to the top of the hill, and then let them see how far ho
could run for a halfpenny. Poor Oliver tried to keep up with the
coach a little way, but was unable to do it, by reason of his fatigue
and sore feet. When the outsides saw this, they put their halfpence
back into their pockets again, declaring that he was an idle young dog,
and didn't deserve anything ; and the coach rattled away and left
only a cloud of dust behind.

In some villages, large painted boards were fixed up : warning all
persons who begged within the district, that they would be sent to
jail. This fi-ightened Oliver very much, and made him glad to get
out of those villages with all possible expedition. In others, he would
stand about the inn-yards, and look mournfnlly at every one who
passed : a proceeding which generally terminated in the landlady's
ordering one of the post-boys who were lounging about, to drive that
strange boy out of the place, for she was sure he had come to steal
something. If he begged at a farmer's house, ten to one but they
threatened to set the dog on him ; and when he showed his nose in
a shop, they talked about the beadle — which brought Oliver's heart
into his mouth, — very often the only thing he had there, for many
hours together.

In fact, if it had not been for a good-hearted turnpike-man, and a
benevolent old lady, Oliver's troubles would have been shortened by
the very same process which had put an end to his mother's ; in other
words, he would most assuredly have fallen dead upon the king's
highway. But the turnpike-man gave him a meal of bread and
cheese ; and the old lady, who had a shipwrecked grandson wandering
barefoot in some distant part of the earth, took pity upon the poor
orphan, and gave him what little she could afford — and more — with
such kind and gentle words, and such tears of sympathy and com-
passion, that they sank deeper into Oliver's soul, than all the suffer-
ings he had ever undergone.

Early on the seventh morning after he had left his native place,
Oliver limped slowly into the little town of Barnet. The window-
shutters were closed ; the street was empty ; not a soul had awakened

The YoUng Pilgrhn's Progress. 49

to the business of the day. The sun was rising in all its splendid
beauty ; but the light only served to show the boy his own lonesome-
ness and desolation, as he sat, with bleeding feet and covered with
dust, upon a door-step.

By degrees, the shutters were opened ; the window-blinds were
drawn up ; and people began passing to and fro. Some few stopped
to gaze at Oliver for a moment or two, or turned round to stare at him
as they hurried by ; but none relieved him, or troubled themselves
to inquire how he came there. He had no heart to beg. And there
he sat.

He had been crouching on the step for some time: wondering at
the great number of public-houses (every other house in Barnet was
a tavern, large or small), gazing listlessly at the coaches as they
passed through, and thinking how strange it seemed that they could
do, with ease, in a few hours, what it had taken him a whole week
of courage and determination beyond his years to accomplish : when
he was roused by observing that a boy, who had passed him carelessly
some minutes before, had returned, and was now surveying him most
earnestly from the opposite side of the way. He took little heed of
this at first ; but the boy remained in the same attitude of close
observation so long, that Oliver raised his head, and returned his
steady look. Upon this, the boy crossed over ; and, walking close up
to Oliver, said,

" Hullo, my covey ! "What's the row ? "

The boy who addressed this inquiry to the young wayfarer, was
about his own age : but one of the queerest looking boys that Oliver
had ever seen. He was a snub-nosed, flat-browed, common-faced boy
enough ; and as dii'ty a juvenile as one would wish to see ; but he
had about him all the airs and manners of a man. He was short of
his age : with rather bow-legs, and little, sharp, ugly eyes. His hat
was stuck on the top of his head so lightly, that it threatened to fall
off every moment — and would have done so, very often, if the wearer
had not had a knack of every now and then giving his head a sudden
twitch, which brought it back to its old place again. He wore a man's
coat, which reached nearly to his heels. He had turned the cuffs
back, half-way up his arm, to get his hands out of the sleeves:
apparently with the ultimate view of thrusting them into the pockets
of his corduroy trousers ; for there he kept them. He was, altogether,
as roystering and swaggering a young gentleman as ever stood four
feet six, or something less, in his bluchers.

" Hullo, my covey ! What's the row ? " said this strange young
gentleman to Oliver.

" I am very hungry and tired," replied Oliver : the tears standing
in his eyes as he spoke. " I have walked a long way. I have been
walking these seven days."

" Walking for sivin days ! " said the young gentleman. '= Oh, I
see. Beak's order, eh? But," he added, noticing Oliver's look of

5© Oliver Twist.

Burprise, " I suppose you don't know what a beak is, my flasli com««
pan-i-on,"

Oliver mildly replied, that he had always heard a bird's mouth
described by the term in question.

" My eyes, how green ! " exclaimed the young gentleman. " Why,
a beak's a madgst'rate ; and when you Avalk by a beak's order, it's not
straight forcrd, but always agoing up, and niyir a coming down agin.
Was you never on the mill ? "

" What mill ? " inquired Oliver.

" What mill ! Why, tlie mill — the mill as takes up so little room
that it'll work inside a Stone Jug ; and always goes better when the
wind's low with people, than when it's high ; acos then they can't get
workmen. But come," said the young gentleman ; " you want grub,
and you shall have it. I'm at low-water-mark myself —only one bob
and a magpie ; but, as far as it goes, I'll fork out and stump. Up
with you on your pins. There ! Now then ! Morrice ! "

Assisting Oliver to rise, the young gentleman took him to an
adjacent chandler's shop, where ho purchased a sufficiency of ready-
dressed ham and a half-quartern loaf, or, as he himself expressed it,
" a fourpenny bran I " the ham being kept clean aud preserved from
dust, by the ingenious expedient of making a hole in the loaf by
pulling out a portion of the crumb, and stuffing it therein. Taking
the bread under his arm, the young gentleman turned into a small
public-house, and led the way to a tap-room in the rear of the
premises. Here, a pot of beer was brought in, by direction of the
mysterious youth ; and Oliver, falling to, at his new friend's bidding,
made a long and hearty meal, during the progress of which, the
strange boy eyed him from time to time with great attention.

" Going to London ? "' said the strange boy, when Oliver had at
length concluded.

" Yes."

" Got any lodgings ? "

" No."

" Money ? "

"No."

The strange boy whistled ; and put his arms into his pockets, as
far as the big coat-sleeves would let them go.

" Do you live in London ? " inquired Oliver.

" Yes. I do, when I'm at home," replied the boy. " I suppose
you want some place to sleep in to-night, don't you ? "

" I do, indeed," answered Oliver. " I have not slept under a roof
since I left the country."

" Don't fret your eyelids on that score," said the young gentleman.
" I've got to be in London to-night ; and I know a 'spectable old
genelman as lives there, wot'U give you lodgings for nothink, and
never ask for the change — that is, if any genelman he knows inter-
duces you. And don't he know me ? Oh, no ! Not in the least !
By no means. Certainly not ! "

The Artful Dodger. 51

TLo yonng gentleman smiled, as if to intimate that the latter
fragments of discourse were playfully ironical ; and finished the beer
as he did so.

This unexpected offer of shelter was too tempting to he resisted ;
especially as it was immediately followed up, by the assurance that
the old gentleman referred to, would doubtless provide Oliver with a
comfortable place, without loss of time. This led to a more friendly
and confidential dialogue; from which Oliver discovered that his
friend's name was Jack Dawkins, and that ho was a peculiar pet and
ytroteqe of the elderly gentleman before mentioned.

Mr. Dawkins's appearance did not say a vast deal in favour of the
comforts which his patron's interest obtained for those whom he took
under his protection; but, as he had a rather flighty and dissolute
mode of conversing, and furthermore avowed that among his intimate
friends he was better known by the sobriquet of " The Artful Dodger,"
Oliver concluded that, being of a dissipated and careless turn, the
moral precepts of his benefactor had hitherto been thrown away upon
him. Under this impression, he secretly resolved to cultivate the
good opinion of the old gentleman as quickly as possible ; and, if he
found the Dodger incorrigible, as he more than half suspected he
should, to decline the honour of his farther acquaintance.

As John Dawkins objected to their entering London before nightfall,
it was nearly eleven o'clock when they reached the turnpike at
Islington. They crossed from the Angel into St. John's Eoad ; struck
down the small street which terminates at Sadler's Wells Theatre ;
through Exmouth Street and Coppice Eow ; down the little court by
the side of the workhouse ; across the classic ground which once bore
the name of Hockley-in-the-Holo ; thence into Little Saffron Hill ;
and so into Saffron Hill the Great : along which the Dodger scudded
at a rapid pace, directing Oliver to follow close at his heels.

Although Oliver had enough to occupy his attention in keeping
sight of his leader, he could not help bestowing a few hasty glances
on either side of the way, as he passed along. A dii'tier or more
wretched place he had never seen. The street was very narrow and
muddy, and the air was impregnated with filthy odours. There
were a good many small shops ; but the only stock in trade appeared
to be heaps of children, who, even at that time of night, were crawling
in and out at the doors, or screaming from the inside. The sole
places that seemed to prosper amid the general blight of the place,
were the public-houses ; and in them, the lowest orders of Irish were
wrangling with might and main. Covered ways and yards, which
here and there diverged from the main street, disclosed little knots of
houses, where drunken men and women were positively wallowing in
filth; and from several of the door-ways, great ill-looking fellows
were cautiously emerging, bound, to all appearance, on no very well-
disposed or harmless errands.

Oliver was just considering whether he hadn't better run away,

52 Oliver Tivist.

when tbey readied tlie bottom of the hill. His conductor, catching
him by the arm, pushed open the door of a house near Field Lane ;
and, drawing him into the passage, closed it behind them.

" Now, then ! " cried a voice from below, in reply to a whistle from
the Dodger.

" Plummy and slam ! " was the reply.

This seemed to be some watchword or signal that all was right ;
for the light of a feeble candle gleamed on the wall at the remote end
of the passage ; and a man's face peeped out, from where a balustrade
of the old kitchen staircase had been broken away.

" There's two on you," said the man, thrusting the candle farther
out, and shading his eyes with his hand. " Who's the t'other one ? "

'' A now pal," replied Jack Dawkins, pulling Oliver forward.

" Where did he come from ? "

" Greenland. Is Fagin up-stairs ? "

" Yes, he's a sortin' the wipes. Up with you I " The candle was
drawn back, and the face disappeared.

Oliver, groping his way with one hand, and having the other firmly
grasped by his companion, ascended with much difficulty the dark
and broken stairs: which his conductor mounted with an ease and
expedition that showed he was well acquainted with them. He threw
open the door of a back-room, and drew Oliver in after him.

The walls and ceiling of the room were perfectly black with age
and dirt. There was a deal table before the fire : upon which were a
candle, stuck in a ginger-beer bottle, two or three pewter pots, a loaf
and butter, and a plate. In a frying-pan, which was on the fire, and
which was secured to the mantelshelf by a string, some sausages were
cooking; and standing over them, with a toasting-fork in his hand,
was a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive
face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair. He was dressed
in a greasy flannel gown, with his throat bare ; and seemed to be
dividing his attention between the frying-pan and the clothes-horse,
over which a great number of silk handkerchiefs were hanging.
Several rough beds made of old sacks, were huddled side by side on
the floor. Seated round the table were four or five boys, none older
than the Dodger, smoking long clay pipes, and di'inking spirits with
the air of middle-aged men. These all crowded about their associate
as he whispered a few words to the Jew ; and then turned round and
grinned at Oliver. So did the Jew himself, toasting-fork in hand.

" This is him, Fagin," said Jack Dawkins ; " my friend Oliver
Twist."

The Jew grinned ; and, making a low obeisance to Oliver, took him
by the hand, and hoped he should have the honour of his intimate
acquiintance. Upon this, the young gentlemen with the pipes came
round him, and shook both his hands very hard — especially the one
in which he held his little bundle. One young gentleman was very
anxious to hang up his cap for him ; and another was so obliging as

f^'^V- &TTU-t«)lM>}t>

i^li44^y&nA4>^)^M^^

In the Pleasant Old Gentleman's House. 53

to put bis hands in his pockets, in order that, as ho was very tirod, he
might not have the trouble of emptying them, himself, when ho wont
to bed. These civilities would probably have been extended much
farther, but for a liberal exercise of the Jew's toasting-fork on the
heads and shoulders of the affectionate youths who offered them.

" We are very glad to see you, Oliver, very," said the Jew. " Dodger,
take off the sausages ; and draw a tub near the fire for Oliver. Ah,
you're a-staring at the pocket-handkerchiefs ! eh, my dear ! There
are a good many of 'em, ain't there? We've just looked 'em out,
ready for the wash ; that's all, Oliver ; that's all. Ha ! ha ! ha ! "

The latter part of this speech, was hailed by a boisterous shout
from all the hopeful pupils of the merry old gentleman. In the midst
of which, they went to supper.

Oliver ate his share, and the Jew then mixed him a glass of hot
gin and water: telling him he must drink it off directly, because
another gentleman wanted the tumbler. Oliver did as he was desired.
Immediately afterwards he felt himself gently lifted on to one of the
sacks ; and then ho sunk into a deep sleep.

CHAPTEE IX.

CONTAINIKG FURTHER PARTICULARS CONCERNING THE PLEASANT OLD
GENTLEMAN, AND HIS HOPEFUL PUPILS.

It was late next morning when Oliver awoke, from a sound, long
sleep. There was no other person in the room but the old Jew, who
was boiling some coffee in a saucepan for breakfast, and whistling
softly to himself as he stirred it round and round, with an iron spoon.
He would stop every now and then to listen when there was the least
noise below: and when he had satisfied himself, he would go on,
whistling and stirring again, as before.

Although Oliver had roused himself from sleep, he was not
thoroughly awake. There is a drowsy state, between sleeping and
waking, when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half
open, and yourself half conscious of everything that is passing around
you, than you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed, and
your senses wrapt in perfect unconsciousness. At such times, a mortal
knows just enough of what his mind is doing, to form some glimmer-
ing conception of its mighty powers, its bounding from earth and
spurning time and space, when freed from the restraint of its corporeal
associate.

Oliver was precisely in this condition. He saw the Jew with his
half-closed eyes ; heard his low whistling ; and recognised the sound
pf the spoon grating against the saucepan's sides ; and yet tho selfr

54 Oliver Twist.

same senses were mentally engaged, at the same time, in busy action
with almost everybody he had ever known.

When the coffee was done, the Jew drew the saucepan to the hob.
Standing, then, in an irresolute attitude for a few minutes, as if ho
did not well know how to employ himself, he turned round and looked
at Oliver, and called him by his name. He did not answer, and was
to all appearance asleep.

After satisfying himself upon this head, the Jew stepped gently to
the door : which he fastened. He then drew forth : as it seemed to
Oliver, from some trap in the floor: a small box, which he placed
carefully on the table. His eyes glistened as he raised the lid, and
looked in. Dragging an old chair to the table, ho sat down ; and
took from it a magnificent gold watch, sparkling with jewels.

*' Aha ! " said the Jew, shrugging up his shoulders, and distorting
every feature with a hideous grin. " Clever dogs ! Clever dogs !
Staunch to the last ! Never told the old parson where they were.
Never peached upon old Fagin ! And why should they ? It wouldn't
have loosened the knot, or kept the drop up, a minute longer. No,
no, no ! Fine follows ! Fine fellows ! "

With these, and other muttered reflections of the like nature, the
Jew once more deposited the watch in its place of safety. At least
half-a-dozen more were severally drawn forth from the same box, and
surveyed with equal pleasure ; besides rings, brooches, bracelets, and
other articles of jewellery, of such magnificent materials, and costly
workmanship, that Oliver had no idea, even of their names.

Having replaced these trinkets, the Jew took out another : so small
that it lay in the palm of his hand. There seemed to be some very
minute inscription on it ; for the Jew laid it flat upon the table, and,
shading it with his hand, pored over it, long and earnestly. At length
he put it down, as if despairing of success ; and, leaning back in his
chair, muttered ;

" What a fine thing capital punishment is ! Dead men never
repent ; dead men never bring awkward stories to light. Ah, it's
a fine thing for the trade ! Five of 'em strung up in a row, and none
left to play booty, or turn white-livered ! "

As the Jew uttered these words, his bright dark eyes, which had
been staring vacantly before him. fell on Oliver's face ; the boy's eyes
were fixed on his in mute curiosity ; and although the recognition was
only for an instant — for the briefest space of time that can possibly
be conceived — it was enough to show the old man that he had been
observed. He closed the lid of the box with a loud crash ; and, laying
his hand on a bread knife which was on the table, started furiously
up. He trembled very much though ; for, even in his terror, Oliver
could see that the knife quivered in the air.

" What's that ? " said the Jew. " What do you watch me for ?
Why are you awake ? What have you seen ? Speak out, boy 1
Quick — quick ! for your life ! "

Strange Conduct of the Pleasant Old Gentleman. 55

"I wasn't able to sleep any longer, sir," replied Oliver, meekly.
" I am very sorry if I have disturbed yon, sir."

"Yon were not awake an hour ago?" said the Jew, scowling
fiercely on the boy.

" No ! No, indeed ! " replied Oliver.

" Are you sure ? " cried the Jew : with a still fiercer look than
before : and a threatening attitude.

"Upon my word I was not, sir," replied Oliver, earnestly. "I
was not, indeed, sir."

" Tush, tush, my dear ! " said the Jew, abniptly resuming his old
manner, and playing with the knife a little, before he laid it down ;
as if to induce the belief that he had caught it up, in mere sport.
"Of course I know that, my dear. I only tried to frighten you.
You're a brave boy. Ha ! ha ! you're a brave boy, Oliver ! " The
Jew rubbed his hands with a chuckle, but glanced uneasily at the box,
notwithstanding.

" Did you see any of these pretty things, my dear ? " said the Jew,
laying his hand upon it after a short pause.

" Yes, sir," replied Oliver.

" Ah ! " said the 5(ivi, turning rather pale. " They — they're mine,
Oliver ; my little property. All I have to live upon, in my old age.
The folks call me a misei', my dear. Only a miser ; that's all."

Oliver thought the old gentleman must be a decided miser to live
in such a dirty place, with so many watches ; but, thinking that per-
haps his fondness for the Dodger and the other boys, cost him a good
deal of money, he only cast a deferential look at the Jew, and asked
if he might get up.

" Certainly, my dear, certainly," replied the old gentleman. " Stay.
There's a pitcher of water in the corner by the door. Bring it here ;
and I'll give you a basin to wash in, my dear."

Oliver got up ; walked across the room ; and stooped for an instant
to raise the pitcher. When he turned his head, the box was gone.

He had scarcely washed himself, and made everything tidy, by
emptying the basin out of the window, agreeably to the Jew's direc-
tions, when the Dodger returned: accompanied by a very sprightly
young friend, whom Oliver had seen smoking on the previous night,
and who was now formally introduced to him as Charley Bates. Tho
four sat down, to breakfast, on the coffee, and some hot rolls and ham
which tho Dodger had brought home in the crown of his hat.

"Well," said the Jew, glancing slyly at Oliver, and addressing
himself to the Dodger, " I hope you've been at work this morning, my
dears ? "

" Hard," replied the Dodger.

" As Nails," added Charley Bates.

" Good boys, good boys ! " said the Jew. " What have yoM got,
Dodger ? "

" A couple of pocket-books," replied that young gentleman.

56 Oliver Twist.

** Lined ? " inquired the Jew, vrith eagerness.

"Pretty well," replied the Dodger, producing two pocket-books;
one green, and the other red.

" Not so heavy as they might be," said the Jew, after looking at the
insides carefully ; " but very neat and nicely made. Ingenious work-
man, aiu't he, Oliver ? "

"Very, indeed, sir," said Oliver. At which Mr. Charles Bates
laughed uproariously ; very much to the amazement of Oliver, who
saw nothing to laugh at, in anything that had passed.

" And what have you got, my dear ? " said Fagin to Charley Bates.

" Wipes," replied Master Bates ; at the same time producing four
pocket-handkerchiefs.

" Well," said the Jew, inspecting them closely ; " they're very good
ones, very. You haven't marked them well, though, Charley ; so the
marks shall be picked out with a needle, and we'll teach Oliver how
to do it. Shall us, Oliver, eh ? Ha ! ha ! ha ! "

" If you please, sir," said Oliver.

"You'd like to be able to make pocket-handkerchiefs as easy as
Charley Bates, wouldn't you, my dear ? " said the Jew.

" Very much, indeed, if you'll teach me, sir," replied Oliver.

Master Bates saw something so exquisitely ludici'ous in this reply,
that he burst into another laugh ; which laugh, meeting the coffee he
was drinking, and carrying it down some wrong channel, very nearly
terminated in his premature suffocation.

" He is so jolly green ! " said Charley when he recovered, as an
apology to the company for his unpolite behaviour.

The Dodger said nothing, but he smoothed Oliver's hair over his
eyes, and said he'd know better, by-and-by ; upon which the old
gentleman, observing Oliver's colour mounting, changed the subject
by asking whether there had been much of a crowd at the execution
that morning ? This made him wonder more and more ; for it was
plain from the replies of the two boys that they had both been there ;
and Oliver naturally wondered how they could possibly have found
time to be so very industrious.

When the breakfast was cleared away, the merry old gentleman and
the two boys played at a very curious and uncommon game, which
was performed in this way. The merry old gentleman, placing a
snuff-box in one pocket of his trousers, a note-case in the other, and
a watch in his waistcoat pocket, with a guard-chain round his neck,
and sticking a mock diamond pin in his shirt : buttoned his coat tight
round him, and putting his spectacle-case and handkerchief in his
pockets, trotted up and down the room with a stick, in imitation of
the manner in which old gentlemen walk about the streets any hour
in the day. Sometimes he stopped at the fire-place, and sometimes at
the door, making believe that he was staring with all his might into
shop-windows. At such times, he would look constantly round him,
for fear of thieves, and would keep slapping all his pockets in turn, to

Games at the Pleasant Old GentlematCs. 57

see that he hadn't lost anything, in Buch a very fanny and natural
manner, that Oliver langhed till the tears i-an down his face. All this
time, the two boys followed him closely abont: getting out of his
sight, so nimbly, every time he turned round, that it was impossible
to follow their motions. At last, the Dodger trod upon his toes, or
ran upon his boot accidentally, while Charley Bates stumbled up
against him behind ; and in that one moment they took from him,
with the most extraordinary rapidity, snuff-box, note-case, watch-guard,
chain, shirt-pin, pocket-handkerchief, even the spectacle-case. If the
old gentleman felt a hand in any one of his pockets, he cried out
where it was ; and then the game began all over again.

When this game had been played a great many times, a couple of
young ladies called to see the young gentlemen ; one of whom was
named Bet, and the other Nancy. They wore a good deal of hair, not
very neatly turned up behind, and were rather untidy about the shoes
and stockings. They were not exactly pretty, perhaps ; but they had
a great deal of colour in their faces, and looked quite stout and hearty.
Being remarkably free and agreeable in their manners, Oliver thought
them very nice girls indeed. As there is no doubt they were.

The visitors stopped a long time. Spirits were produced, in conse-
quence of one of the young ladies complaining of a coldness in her
inside ; and the conversation took a very convivial and improving turn.
At length, Charley Bates expressed his opinion that it was time to pad
the hoof. This, it occurred to Oliver, must be French for going out ;
for, directly afterwards, the Dodger, and Charley, and the two young
ladies, went away together, having been kindly furnifihed by the
amiable old Jew with money to spend.

" There, my dear," said Fagin. " That's a pleasant life, isn't it ?
They have gone out for the day."

" Have they done work, sir ? " inquired Oliver.

" Yes," said the Jew ; " that is, unless they should unexpectedly
come across any, when they are out ; and they won't neglect it, if they
do, my dear, depend upon it. Make 'em your models, my dear.
Make 'em your models," tapping the fire-shovel on the hearth to add
force to his words ; " do everything they bid you, and take their
advice in all matters — especially the Dodger's, my dear. He'll be a
great man himself, and will make you one too, if yoii take pattern by
him. — Is my handkerchief hanging out of my pocket, my dear ? " said
the Jew, stopping short.

" Yes, sir," said Oliver.

" See if you can take it out, without my feeling it : as you saw them
do, when we were at play this morning."

Oliver held up the bottom of the pocket with one hand, as he had
seen the Dodger hold it, and drew the handkerchief lightly out of it
with the other.

" Is it gone ? " cried the Jew.

" Here it is, sir," said Oliver, showing it in his hand.

58 Oliver Tivist.

" You're a clever boy, my dear," said the playful old gentleman,
patting Oliver on the head approvingly. " I never saw a sharper lad.
Here's a shilling for you. If you go on, in this way, you'll be the
greatest man of the time. And now come here, and I'll show you
how to take the marks out of the hafidkerchiefs."

Oliver wondered what picking the old gentleman's pocket in play,
had to do with his chances of being a great man. But, thinking that
the Jew, being so much his senior, must know best, he followed him
quietly to the table, and was soon deeply involved in his new study.

CHAPTER X.

OLIVER BECOMES BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH THE CHARACTERS OF HIS
NEW ASSOCIATES; AND PURCHASES EXPERIENCE AT A HIGH PRICE.
BEING A SHORT, BUT VERY IMPORTANT CHAPTER, IN THIS HISTORY.

For many days, Oliver remained in the Jew's room, picking the marks
out of the pocket-handkerchiefs, (of which a great number were brought
home,) and sometimes taking part in the game already described:
which the two boys and the Jew played, regularly, every morning.
At length, he began to languish for fresh air, and took many occasions
of earnestly entreating the old gentleman to allow him to go out to
work, with his two companions.

Oliver was rendered the more anxious to be actively employed, by
what he had seen of the stern morality of the old gentleman's character..
Whenever the Dodger or Charley Bates came home at night, empty-
handed, he would expatiate with great vehemence on the misery of
idle and lazy habits ; and would enforce upon them the necessity of
an active life, by sending them supperless to bed. On one occasion,
indeed, he even went so far as to knock them both down a flight of
stairs ; but this was carrying out his virtuous precepts to an unusual
extent.

At length, one morning, Oliver obtained the permission he had so
eagerly sought. There had been no handkerchiefs to work upon, for
two or three days, and tbe dinners had been rather meagre. Perhaps
these were reasons for the old gentleman's giving his assent ; but,
whether they were or no, he told Oliver he might go, and placed him
under the joint guardianship of Charley Bates, and his friend the
Dodger.

The three boys sallied out ; the Dodger with his coat-sleeves tucked
up, and his hat cocked, as usual ; Master Bates sauntering along with
his hands in his pockets ; and Oliver between them, wondering where
they were going, and what branch of manufacture he would te
instructed in, first.

Out for a Walk. 59

Tlie pace at which they went, was such a very lazy, ill-looking
saunter, that Oliver soon began to think his companions wore going to
deceive the old gentleman, by not going to work at all. The Dodger
had a vicious propensity, too, of pulling the caps from the heads of
small boys and tossing them down areas; while Charley Bates ex-
hibited some very loose notions concerning the rights of property, by
pilfering divers apples and onions from the stalls at the kennel sides,
and thrusting them into pockets which were so surprisingly capacious,
that they seemed to undermine his whole suit of clothes in every
direction. These things looked so bad, that Oliver was on the point
of declaring his intention of seeking his way back, in the best way
he could ; when his thoughts were suddenly directed into another
channel, by a very mysterious change of behaviour on the part of the
Dodger.

They were just emerging from a narrow court not far from the open
square in Clerkenwell, which is yet called, by some strange perversion
of terms, " The Green : " when the Dodger made a sudden stop ; and,
laying his finger on his lip, drew his companions back again, with the
greatest caution and circumspection.

" What's the matter ? " demanded Oliver.

" Hush ! " replied the Dodger. " Do you see that old cove at tho
book-stall?"

"The old gentleman over the way?" said Oliver. "Yes, I see
him."

" He'll do," said the Dodger.

" A prime plant," observed Master Charley Bates.

Oliver looked from one to the other, with the greatest surprise ;
but he was not permitted to make any inquiries; for the two boys
walked stealthily across the road, and slunk close behind the old
gentleman towards whom his attention had been directed. Oliver
walked a few paces after them ; and, not knowing whether to advance
or retire, stood looking on in silent amazement.

The old gentleman was a very respectable-looking personage, with
a powdered head and gold spectacles. He was dressed in a bottle-
green coat with a black velvet collar; wore white trousers; and
carried a smart bamboo cane under his arm. He had taken up a book
from the stall, and there he stood, reading away, as hard as if he were
in his elbow-chair, in his own study. It is very possible that he
fancied himself there, indeed ; for it was plain, from his abstraction,
that he saw not the book-stall, nor the street, nor the boys, nor, in
sliort, anything but the book itself: which he was reading straight
through : turning over the leaf when he got to the bottom of a page,
beginning at the top line of the next one, and going regularly on,
with the greatest interest and eagerness.

What was Oliver's horror and alarm as ho stood a few paces oflf,
looking on Avith his eyelids as wide open as they would possibly go,
to see the Dodger plunge his hand into the old gentleman's pocket,

6o Oliver Twist.

and draw from thence a handkerchief ! To sec him hand the same to
Charley Bates ; and finally to behold them, both, running away round
the corner at full speed !

In an instant the whole mystery of the handkerchiefs, and the
•watches, and the jewels, and the Jew, rushed upon the boy's mind.
Ho stood, for a moment, with the blood so tingling through all his
veins from terror, that he felt as if he were in a burning fire ; then,
confused and frightened, he took to his heels ; and, not knowing
what he did, made ofi" as fast as he could lay his feet to the ground.

This was all done in a minute's space. In the very instant when
Oliver began to run, the old gentleman, putting his hand to his pocket,
and missing his handkerchief, turned sharp round. Seeing the boy
scudding away at such a rapid jiace, he very naturally concluded him
to be the depredator ; and, shouting " Stop thief ! " with all liis might,
made off after him, book in hand.

But the old gentleman was not the only person who raised the hue-
and-cry. TJie Dodger and Master Bates, unwilling to attract public
attention by running down the open street, had merely retired into
the very first doorway round the corner. They no sooner heard the
cry, and saw Oliver running, than, guessing exactly how the matter
stood, they issued forth with great promptitude ; and, shouting " Stop
thief ! " too, joined in the pursuit like good citizens.

Although Oliver had been brought up by philosophers, he was not
theoretically acquainted with the beautiful axiom that self-preservation
is the first law of nature. If he had been, perhaps he would have
been prepared for this. Not being prepared, however, it alarmed him
the more ; so away he went like the wind, with the old gentleman and
the two boys roaring and shouting behind him.

" Stop thief ! Stop thief ! " There is a magic in the sound. The
tradesman leaves his counter, and the carman his waggon ; the butcher
throws down his tray ; the baker his basket ; the milkman his pail ;
the errand-boy his parcels ; the school-boy his marbles ; the paviour
his pickaxe; the child his battledore. Away they run, pell-mell,
helter-skelter, slap-dash : tearing, yelling, screaming, knoclang down
the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and
astonishing the fowls : and streets, squares, and courts, re-echo with
the sound.

"Stop thief! Stop thief!" The cry is taken up by a hundred
voices, and the crowd accumulate at every turning. Away they fly,
splashing through the mud, and rattling along the pavements : up go
the windows, out run the people, onward bear the mob, a whole
audience desert Punch in the very thickest of the plot, and, joining
the rushing throng, swell the shout, and lend fresh vigour to the cry,
"Stop thief! Stop thief!"

"Stop thief! Stop thief!" There is a passion for hunting some-
thinrf deeply implanted in the human breast. One wretched breathless
child, panting with exhaustion ; terror in his looks ; agouy in his

^^^4^^ a^?/^/z^^€^^a^Zn^^^,(fa>^^^/^ ^^^(/t::^/

Taken into Custody. 6l

eyes ; largo drops of perspiration streaming down his face ; strains
every nerve to make head npon his pursuers ; and as they follow on
his track, and gain upon him every instant, they hail his decreasing
strength with still louder shouts, and whoop and scream with joy.
" Stop thief! " Ay, stop him for God's sake, were it only in mercy I

Stopped at last ! A clover blow. He is down upon the pavement ;
and the crowd eagerly gather round him : each new comer, jostling
and struggling with the others to catch a glimpse. " Stand aside I "
" Give him a little air ! " " Nonsense ! he don't deserve it." " Where's
the gentleman ? " " Here he is, coming down the street." " Make
room there for the gentleman ! " " Is this the boy, sir ! " " Yes."

Oliver lay, covered with mud and dust, and bleeding from the
mouth, looking wildly round upon the heap of faces that surrounded
him, when the old gentleman was officiously dragged and pushed into
the circle by the foremost of the pursuers.

" Yes," said the gentleman, " I am afraid it is the boy."

" Afraid ! " munnured the crowd. " That's a good 'un ! "

" Poor fellow I " said the gentleman, " he has hurt himself."

" I did that, sir," said a great lubberly fellow, stepping forward ;
"and preciously I cut my knuckle agin' his mouth. I stopped
him, sir."

The fellow touched his hat with a grin, expecting something for his
pains ; but, the old gentleman, eyeing him with an expression of
dislike, looked anxiously round, as if he contemplated running away
himself : which it is very possible he might have attempted to do, and
thus have afforded another chase, had not a police officer (who is
generally the last person to arrive in such cases) at that moment
made his way through the crowd, and seized Oliver by the collar.

" Come, get up," said the man, roughly.

" It wasn't me indeed, sir. Indeed, indeed, it was two other boys,"
sai<l Oliver, clasping Ids hands passionately, and looking round.
" They are here somewhere."

" Oh no, they ain't," said the officer. He meant this to be iionical,
but it was true besides ; for- the Dodger and Charley Bates had filed
off down the first convenient court they came to. " Come, get up ! "

" Don't hurt him," said the old gentleman, compassionately.

" Oh no, I won't hurt him," replied the officer, tearing his jacket
half off his back, in proof thereof. " Come, I know you ; it won't do.
Will you stand upon your legs, you young devil ? "

Oliver, who could hardly stand, made a shift to raise himself on his
feet, and was at once lugged along the streets by the jacket-collar, at
a rapid pace. The gentleman Avalked on with them by the officer's
side ; and as many of the crowd as could achieve the feat, got a little
ahead, and stared back at Oliver from time to time. The boys
shouted in triumph ; and on they wont.

CHAPTER XL

TREATS OP MB. FANG THE POLICE MAGISTRATE ; AND FURNISHES A
SLIGHT SPECIMEN OF HIS MODE OF ADMINISTERING JUSTICE.

The offence had been committed within the district, and indeed in the
immediate neighbourhood of, a very notorious metropolitan police
office. The crowd had only the satisfaction of accompanying Oliver
through two or three streets, and down a place called Mutton Hill,
when he was led beneath a low archway, and up a dirty court, into
this dispensary of summary justice, by the back way. It was a small
paved yard into which they turned ; and here they encountered a
stout man with a bunch of whiskers on his face, and a bunch of keys
in his hand.

" What's the matter now ? " said the man carelessly.

" A young fogle-hunter," replied the man who had Oliver in charge.

" Are you the party that's been robbed, sir ? " inq^uired the man
with the keys.

" Yes, I am," replied the old gentleman ; " but I am not sure that
this boy actually took the handkerchief. I — I would rather not press
the case."

" Must go before the magistrate now, sir," replied the man. " His
worship will be disengaged in half a minute. Now, young gallows ! "

This was an invitation for Oliver to enter through a door which he
unlocked as he spoke, and which led into a stone cell. Here he was
searched ; and nothing being found upon him, locked up.

This cell was in shape and size something like an area cellar,
only not so light. It was most intolerably dirty ; for it was Monday
morning ; and it had been tenanted by six drunken people, who had
been locked up, elsewhere, since Saturday night. But this is little.
In our station-houses, men and women are every night confined on
the most trivial charges — the word is worth noting — in dungeons,
compared with which, those in Newgate, occupied by the most
atrocious felons, tried, found guilty, and under sentence of death, are
palaces. Lot anyone who doubts this, compare the two.

The old gentleman looked almost as rueful as Oliver when the key
grated in the lock. He turned with a sigh to the book, which had
been the innocent cause of all this disturbance.

" There is something in that boy's face," said the old gentleman to
himself as he walked slowly away, tapping his chin with the cover of
the book, in a thoughtful manner ; " something that touches and
interests me. Can he be innocent ? He looked like. — By the bye,"
exclaimed the old gentleman, halting very abmptly, and staring up
into the sky, " Bless my soul ! Where have I seen something liko
that look before ? "

Ai the Police Office, 63

After musing for some minutes, the old gentleman walked, with
the same meditative face, into a back ante-room oi)ening from the
yard ; aud there, retiring into a corner, called up before his mind's
eye a vast amphitheatre of faces over which a dusky curtain had hung
for many years. " No," said the old gentleman, shaking his head ;
" it must be imagination."

He wandered over them again. He had called them into view, and
it was not easy to replace the shroud that had so long concealed them.
There were the faces of friends, and foes, and of many that had been
aliuost strangers peering intrusively from the crowd ; there were the
faces of young and blooming girls that were now old women ; there
were faces that the grave had changed and closed upon, but which the
mind, superior to its power, still dressed in their old freshness and
beauty, calling back the lustre of the eyes, the brightness of the smile,
the beaming of the soul through its mask of clay, and whispering of
beauty beyond the tomb, changed but to be heightened, and taken
from earth only to bo set up as a light, to shed a soft and gentle glow
upon the path to Heaven.

But the old gentleman could recall no one countenance of which
Oliver's features bore a trace. So, he heaved a sigh over the recol-
lections he had awakened ; and being, happily for himself, an absent
old gentleman, buried them again in the pages of the musty book.

He was roused by a touch on the shoulder, and a request from the
man with the keys to follow him into the office. He closed his book
hastily ; and was at ouce ushered into the imposing presence of the
renowned Mr. Fang.

The office was a front parlour, with a panelled wall. Mr. Fang
sat behind a bar, at the upper end ; and on one side the door was a
sort of wooden pen in which poor little Oliver was already deposited ;
trembling very much at the awfulness of the scene.

Mr. Fang was a lean, long-backed, stiff-necked, middle-sized man,
with no great quantity of hair, and what he had, growing on the back
and sides of his head. His face was stern, and much flushed. If he
were really not in the habit of drinking rather more than was exactly
good for him, he might have brought an action against his countenance
for libel, and have recovered heavy damages.

The old gentleman bowed respectfully; and advancing to the
magistrate's desk, said, suiting the action to the word, " That is my
name and address, sir." He then withdrew a pace or two ; and, with
another polite and gentlemanly inclination of the head, waited to be
questioned.

Now, it so happened that Mr. Fang was at that moment perusing a
leading article m a newspaper of the morning, adverting to some
recent decision of his, and commending him, for the three hundred
and fiftieth time, to the special and particular notice of the Secretary
of State for the Home Department. He was out of temper ; and he
looked up with an angry scowl.

64 Oliver Twist.

" Who arc yon ? " said Mr. Fang.

The old gentleman pointed, with some surprise, to his card.

" Officer ! " said Mr. Fang, tossing the card contemptuously away
with the newspaper. " Who is this fellow ? "

" My name, sir," said the old gentleman, speaking like a gentleman,
" my name, sir, is Brownlow. Permit me to inquire the name of the
magistrate who oflfers a gratuitous and unprovoked insult to a respect-
able person, under the protection of the bench." Saying this, Mr.
Brownlow looked round the office as if in search of some person who
would afford him the required information.

" Officer ! " said Mr. Fang, throwing the paper on one side, " what's
this fellow charged with ? "

" He's not charged at all, your worship," replied the officer. " He
appears against the boy, your worship."

His worship knew this perfectly well ; but it was a good annoyance,
and a safe one.

"Appears against the boy, does he?" said Fang, surveying Mr.
Brownlow contemptuously from head to foot. " Swear him ! "

"Before I am sworn, I must beg to say one word," said Mr.
Brownlow : " and that is, that I really never, without actual expe-
rience, could have believed "

" Hold your tongue, sir ! " said Mr. Fang, peremptorily.

" I will not, sir I " replied the old gentleman.

" Hold your tongue this instant, or I'll have you turned out of the
office ! " said Mr. Fang. " You're an insolent, impertinent fellow.
How dare you bully a magistrate ! "

" Whivt ! " exclaimed the old gentleman, reddening.

" Swear this person ! " said Fang to the clerk. " I'll not hear
another word. Swear him."

Mr. Brownlow's indignation was greatly roused ; but reflecting
perhaps, that he might only injure the boy by giving vent to it, ho
suppressed his feelings and submitted to be sworn at once.

'• Now," said Fang, " what's the charge against this boy ? What
have you got to say, sir ? "

"I was standing at a bookstall " Mr. Brownlow began.

" Hold your tongue, sii"," said Mr. Fang. " Policeman ! Where's
the policeman ? Here, swear this policeman. Now, policeman, what
is this ? "

The policeman, with becoming humility, related how he had taken
the charge ; how he had searched Oliver, and found nothing on his
person ; and how that was all he knew about it.

" Are there any witnesses ? " inquired Mr. Fang.

" None, your worship," replied the policeman.

Mr. Fang sat silent for some minutes, and then, turning round to
the prosecutor, said in a towering passion,

'• Do you mean to state what your complaint against this boy is,
man, or do you not? You have been sworn. Now, if you stand

Mr. Fang on the Bench, 65

there, refusing to give evidence, I'll pnnish you for disrespect to the
bench ; I will, by "

By what, or by whom, nobody knows, for the clerk and jailor
coughed very loud, just at the right moment ; and the former dropped
a heavy book upon the floor, thus preventing the word from being
heard — accidentally, of course.

With many interruptions, and repeated insults, Mr. Brownlow con-
trived to state his case ; observing that, in the surprise of the moment,
he had run after the boy because ho saw him running away; and
expressing his hope that, if the magistrate should believe him,
although not actually the thief, to be connected with thieves, he
would deal as leniently with him as justice would allow.

" He has been hurt already," said the old gentleman in conclusion.
" And I fear," he added, with great energy, looking towards the bar,
" I really fear that he is ill."

" Oh ! yes, I dare say ! " said Mr. Fang, with a sneer. " Come,
none of your ti-icks here, you young vagabond; they won't do.
What's your name *? "

Oliver tried to reply, but his tongue failed him. He was deadly
pale ; and the whole place seemed turning round and round.

"What's your name, you hardened scoundrel?" demanded Mr.
Fang. " Officer, what's his name ? "

This was addressed to a bluff old fellow, in a striped waistcoat,
who was standing by the bar. He bent over Oliver, and repeated
the inquiry ; but finding him really incapable of imderstanding the
question ; and knowing that his not replying would only infuriate
the magistrate the more, and add to the severity of his sentence ; he
hazarded a guess.

" He says his name's Tom White, your worship," said this kind-
hearted thief-taker.

" Oh, he won't speak out, won't he ? " said Fang. " Very well,
very Tv^U. Where does he live ? "

" Where he can, your worship," replied the officer ; again pretend-
ing to receive Oliver's answer.

" Has he any parents ? " inquired Mr. Fang.

"He says they died in his infancy, your worship," replied the
officer : hazarding the usual reply.

At this point of the inquiry, Oliver raised his head ; and, looking
round with imploring eyes, murmured a feeble prayer for a draught
of water.

" Stuff and nonsense ! " said Mr. Fang : " don't try to make a fool
of me."

" I think he really is ill, your worship," remonstrated the officer.

" I know better," said Mr. Fang.

"Take care of him, officer," said the old gentleman, raising his
hands instinctively ; " he'll fall down."

" Stand away, officer," cried Fang ; " let him, if he likes."

«■

66 Oliver Twist.

Oliver availed himself of the kind permission, and fell to the floor
in a fainting-fit. The men in the office looked at each other, but no
one dared to stir.

" I knew he was shamming," said Fang, as if this were incontestable
proof of the fact. " Let him lie there ; he'll soon be tired of that."

" How do yon propose to deal with the case, sir ? " inq^uired the
clerk in a low voice.

" Summarily," replied Mr. Fang. " He stands committed for three
months — hard labour of course. Clear the office."

The door was opened for this purpose, and a couple of men M'ere
preparing to carry the insensible boy to his cell ; when an elderly
man of decent but poor appearance, clad in an old suit of black,
rushed hastily into the office, and advanced towards the bench.

" Stop, stop ! Don't take him away ! For Heaven's sake stop a
moment ! " cried the new-comer, breathless with haste.

Although the presiding Genii in such an office as this, exercise a
summary and arbitrary power over the liberties, the good name, the
character, almost the lives, of Her Majesty's subjects, especially of
the poorer class ; and although, within such walls, enough fantastic
tricks are daily played to make the angels blind with weeping ; they
are closed to the public, save through the medium of the daily press.*
Mr. Fang was consequently not a Httle indignant to see an unbidden
guest enter in such irreverent disorder.

"What is this? Who is this? Turn this man out. Clear the
office ! " cried Mr. Fang.

" I will speak," cried the man ; " I will not be turned out. I saw
it all. I keep the book-stall. I demand to be sworn. I will not be
put down. Mr. Fang, you must hear me. You must not refuse, sir."

The man was right. His manner was determined ; and the matter
was growing rather too serious to be hushed up.

" Swear the man," growled Mr. Fang, with a very ill gi'ace. " Now,
man, what have you got to say ? "

" This," said the man : " I saw three boys : two others and the
prisoner here : loitering on the opposite side of the way, when this
gentleman was reading. The robbery was committed by another boy.
I saw it done ; and I saw that this boy was perfectly amazed and
stupefied by it." Having by this time recovered a little breath, the
worthy book-stall keeper proceeded to relate, in a more coherent
manner, the exact circumstances of the robbery.

" Why didn't you come here before ? " said Fang, after a pause.

" I hadn't a soul to mind the shop," replied the man, " Everybody
who could have helped me, had joined in the pursuit. I could get
nobody till five minutes ago ; and I've run here all the way."

" The prosecutor was reading, was he ? " inquired Fang, after
another pause.

" ¥es," replied the man. " The very book he has in his hand."
* Or w«re virtually, then.

A Neiu Feature in the Case. 6y

" Oh, that book, eh ? " said Fang. " Is it paid for ? "

" No, it is not," replied the man, with a smile.

" Dear me, I forgot all about it ! " exclaimed the absent old gentle-
man, innocently.

" A nice person to prefer a charge against a poor boy ! " said Fang,
with a comical effort to look humane. " I consider, sir, that you have
obtained possession of that book, under very suspicious and disre-
putable circumstances ; and you may think yourself very fortunate
that the owner of the property declines to prosecute. Let tliis bo a
lesson to you, my man, or the law will overtake you yet. The boy
is discharged. Clear the office."

" D — n me ! " cried the old gentleman, bursting out with the rage
ho had kept down so long, " d — n me ! - I'll "

" Clear the office ! " said the magistrate. " Officers, do you hear ?
Clear the office ! "

The mandate was obeyed ; and the indignant Mr. Brownlow was
conveyed out, with the l>ook in one hand, and the bamboo cane in the
other : in a perfect phrenzy of rage and defiance. He reached the
yard ; and his passion vanished in a moment. Little Oliver Twist
lay on his back on the pavement, with his shirt unbuttoned, and his
temples bathed with water; his face a deadly white; and a cold
tremble convulsing his whole frame.

" Poor boy, poor boy ! " said Mr. Brownlow, bending over him.
" Call a coach, somebody, pray. Directly ! "

A coach was obtained, and Oliver having been carefully laid on
one seat, the old gentleman got in and sat himself on the other.

" May I accompany you ? " said the book-stall keeper, looking in.

"Bless me, yes, my dear sir," said Mr. Brownlow quickly. "I
forgot you. Dear, dear ! I have this unhappy book still ! Jump in.
Poor fellow ! There's no time to lose."

The book-stall keeper got into the coach ; and away they drove.

CHAPTER XII.

l>f WHICH OLIVER IS TAKEN BETTER CARE OF THAN HE EVER WAS
BEFORE. AND IN WHICH THE NARRATIVE REVERTS TO THE MERRY
OLD GENTLEMAN AND HIS YOUTHFUL FRIENDS.

The coach rattled away, over nearly the same ground as that which
Oliver had traversed when he first entered London in company with
the Dodger ; and, turning a different way when it reached the Angel
at Islington, stopped at length before a neat house, in a quiet shady
street near Pentonville. Here, a bed was prepared, without loss of
time, in whiclji Mr, Brownlow saw his young charge carefully and

6S Oliver Twist.

comfoi'tably deposited ; aud here, he was tended with a kindness and
solicitude that knew no bounds.

But, for many days, Oliver remained insensible to all the goodness
of his new friends. The sun rose and sank, and rose and sank again,
and many times after that ; and still the boy lay stretched on his
uneasy bed, dwindling away beneath the dry and wasting heat of
fever. The worm does not his work more surely on the dead body,
than does this slow creeping fii*e upon the living frame.

Weak, and thin, and pallid, he awoke at last from what seemed to
have been a long and troubled dream. Feebly raising himself in the
bed, with his head resting on his trembling arm, he looked anxiously
around.

" What room is this ? Where have I been brought to ? " said
Oliver. " This is not the place I went to sleep in."

He uttered these words in a feeble voice, being very faint and weak ;
but they were overheard at once. The curtain at the bed's head was
hastily drawn back, and a motherly old lady, very neatly and precisely
dressed, rose as she undrew it, from an arm-chair close by, in which
she had been sitting at needle-work.

" Hush, my dear," said the old lady softly. " You must be very
quiet, or you will be ill again ; and you have been very bad, — as bad
as bad could be, pretty nigh. Lie down again ; there's a dear ! "
With those words, the old lady very gently placed Oliver's head upon
the pillow ; and, smoothing back his hair from his forehead, looked
BO kindly and lovingly in his face, that he could not help placing his
little withered hand in hers, and drawing it round his neck.

" Save us ! " said the old lady, with tears in her eyes, " What a
grateful little dear it is. Pretty creetur ! What would his mother
feel if she had sat by him as I have, and could see him now ! "

"Perhaps she does see me," whispered Oliver, folding his hands
together ; " perhaps she has sat by me. I almost feel as if she had."

" That was the fever, my dear," said the old lady mildly.

" I suppose it was," replied Oliver, " because heaven is a long way
off ; and they are too happy there, to come down to the bedside of a
poor boy. But if she knew I was ill, she must have pitied me, even
there ; for she was very ill herself before she died. She can't know
anything about me though," added Oliver after a moment's silence.
" If she had seen me hurt, it would have made her sorrowful ; and
her face has always looked sweet and happy, when I have dreamed of
her."

The old lady made no reply to this ; but wiping her eyes first, and
her spectacles, which lay on the counterpane, afterwards, as if they
were part and parcel of those features, brought some cool stuff for
Oliver to diink ; and then, patting him on the cheek, told him he
must lie very quiet, or he would be ill again.

So, Oliver kept very still ; partly because he was anxious to obey
the kind old lady in all things ; and partly, to tell the truth, because

Getting Better. 6g

ho was completely exhausted with what he had already said. He
soon fell iuto a gentle doze, from which he was awakened by the light
of a candle : which, being brought near the bed, showed him a gentle-
man with a very large and loud-ticking gold watch in his hand, who
felt his pulse, and said he was a great deal better.

" You are a great deal better, are you not, my dear ? " said the
gentleman.

" Yes, thank you, sir," replied Oliver.

" Yes, I know you are," said the gentleman : " You're hungry too,
an'tyou?"

" No, sir," answered Oliver.

" Hem ! " said the gentleman. " No, I know you're not. He is not
hungry, Mrs. Bedwin," said the gentleman : loolring very wise.

The old lady made a respectftil inclination of the head, which
seemed to say that she thought the doctor was a very clever man.
The doctor appeared much of the same opinion himself.

" You feel sleepy, don't you, my dear ? " said the doctor.

" No, sir," replied Oliver.

"No," said the doctor, with a very shrewd and satisfied look.
" You're not sleepy. Nor thirsty. Are you ? "

" Yes, sir, rather thirsty," answered Oliver.

" Just as I expected, Mrs. Bedwin," said the doctor. " It's very
natural that he should be thirsty. You may give him a little tea,
ma'am, and some dry toast without any butter. Don't keep him too
warm, ma'am ; but be careful that you don't let him be too cold ; will
you have the goodness ? "

The old lady dropped a curtsey. The doctor, after tasting the cool
stuff, and expressing a qualified approval of it, hurried away: his
boots creaking in a very important and wealthy manner as he went
down-stairs.

Oliver dozed off again, soon after this; when he awoke, it was
nearly twelve o'clock. The old lady tenderly bade him good-night
shortly afterwards, and left him in charge of a fat old woman who
had just come : bringing with her, in a little bundle, a small Prayer
Book and a large nightcap. Putting the latter on her head and the
former on the table, the old woman, after telling Oliver that she had
come to sit up with him, drew her chair close to the fire and went off
into a series of short naps, chequered at frequent intervals with sundry
tumblings forward, and divers moans and chokings. These, however,
had no worse effect than causing her to rub her nose very hard, and
then fall asleep again.

And thus the night crept slowly on. Oliver lay awake for some
time, counting the little circles of light which the reflection of the
rushlight-shade threw upon the ceiling ; or tracing with his languid
eyes the intricate pattern of the paper on the wall. The darkness
and the deep stillness of the room were very solemn ; as they brought
into the boy's mind the thought that death had been hovering there,

"JO Oliver Twist.

for many days and nights, and might yet fill it with tho gloom and
dread of his awful presence, he turned his face upon the pillow, and
fervently prayed to Heaven.

Gradually, he fell into that deep tranquil sleep which ease from
recent suffering alone imparts ; that calm and peaceful rest which it
is pain to wake from. Who, if this were death, would be roused again
to all the struggles and tuiinoils of life ; to all its cares for the present ;
its anxieties for the future ; more than all, its weary recollections of
the past !

It had been bright day, for hours, when Oliver opened his eyes ; he
felt cheerful and happy. The crisis of the disease was safely past.
He belonged to the world again.

In three days' time he was able to sit in an easy-chair, well propped
up with pillows ; and, as he was still too weak to walk, Mrs. Bedwin
had him carried down-stairs into the little housekeeper's room, which
belonged to her. Having him set, here, by the fireside, the good
old lady sat herself down too ; and, being in a state of considerable
delight at seeing him so much better, forthwith began to cry most
violently.

" Never mind me, my dear," said the old lady ; " I'm only having
a regular good cry. There ; it's all over now ; and I'm quite com-
fortable."

" You're very, very kind to me, ma'am," said Oliver.

" Well, never you mind that, my dear," said the old lady ; " that's
got nothing to do with your broth ; and it's full time you had it ; for
the doctor says Mr. Brownlow may come in to see you this morning ;
and we must get up our best looks, because the better we look, the
more he'll be pleased." And with this, the old lady applied herself
to warming np, in a little saucepan, a basin full of broth : strong
enough, Oliver thought, to furnish an amj)le dinner, when reduced to
the regulation strength, for three hundred and fifty paupers, at the
lowest computation.

" Are you fond of pictures, dear ? " inquired the old lady, seeing
that Oliver had fixed his eyes, most intently, on a portrait which hung
against the wall ; just opposite his chair.

" I don't quite know, ma'am," said Oliver, without taking his eyes
from the canvas ; " I have seen so few that I hardly know. What a
beautiful, mild face that lady's is ! "

" Ah ! " said the old lady, " painters always make ladies out prettier
than they are, or they wouldn't get any custom, child. The man that
invented the machine for taking likenesses might have known tliab
would never succeed ; it's a deal too honest. A deal," said the old
lady, laughing very heartily at her own acuteness.

" Is — is that a likeness, ma'am ? " said Oliver.

" Yes," said the old lady, looking up for a moment from the broth ;
" that's a portrait."

" Whose, ma'am ? " asked Oliver.

Y3^^___^mk^]^*l^

^C6/z^€4yy^:€ct:^Z'fe4:^>?z^

Better and Better. 71

" Why, really, my dear, I don't know," answered the old lady in a
good-humoured manner. " It's not a likeness of anybody that you or
I know, I expect. It seems to strike your fancy, dear."

" It is so very pretty," replied Oliver.

" Why, sure you're not afraid of it ? " said the old lady : observing,
in great surprise, the look of awe with which the child regarded the
painting.

" Oh no, no," i*eturned Oliver quickly ; " but tlie eyes look so
sorrowful ; and where I sit, they seem fixed upon me. It makes my
heart beat," added Oliver in a low voice, "as if it was alive, and
wanted to speak to me, but couldn't."

" Lord save us ! " exclaimed the old lady, starting ; " don't talk in
that way, child. You're weak and nervous after your illness. Let
me wheel your chair round to the other side ; and then you won't see
it. There ! " said the old lady, suiting the action to the word ; " you
don't see it now, at all events."

Oliver did see it in his mind's eye as distinctly as if he had not
altered his position ; but he thought it better not to worry the kind
old lady ; so he smiled gently when she looked at him ; and Mrs.
Bedwin, satisfied that ho felt more comfortable, salted and broke bits
of toasted bread into the broth, with all the bustle befitting so solemn
a preparation. Oliver got through it with extraordinary expedition.
He had scarcely swallowed the last spoonful, when there came a soft
rap at the door. " Come in," said the old lady ; and in walked Mr.
Brownlow.

Now, the old gentleman came in as brisk as need be ; but, ho had
no sooner raised his spectacles on his forehead, and thrust Ms hands
behind the skirts of his dressing-gown to take a good long look at
Oliver, than his coimtenance underwent a very great variety of odd
contortions. Oliver looked very worn and shadowy from sickness,
and made an inefifectual attempt to stand up, out of respect to his
benefactor, which terminated in his sinking back into the chair again ;
and the fact is, if the truth must bo told, that Mr. Brownlow's heart,
being large enough for any six ordinary old gentlemen of humane
disposition, forced a supply of tears into his eyes, by some hydraulic
process which we are not sufficiently philosophical to be in a condition
to explain.

" Poor boy, poor boy ! " said Mr. Brownlow, clearing his throat.
"I'm rather hoarse this morning, Mrs. Bedwin. I'm afraid I have
caught cold."

" I hope not, sir," said Mrs. Bedwin. " Everything you have had,
has been well aired, sir."

" I don't know, Bedwin. I don't know," said Mr. Brownlow ; " I
rather think I had a damp napkin at dinner-time yesterday ; but never
mind that. How do you feel, my dear ? "

" Veiy happy, sir," replied Oliver, " And very grateful indeed, sir,
for your goodness to me."

72 Oliver Twist.

" Good boy," said Mr. Brownlow, stoutly. " Have you given biin
any nourishment, Bedwin ? Any slops, eli ? "

" Ho Las just had a basin of beautiful strong broth, sir," replied
Mrs. Bedwin: drawing herself up slightly, and laying a strong
emphasis on the last word : to intimate that between slops, and broth
well compounded, there existed no affinity or connection whatsoever.

" Ugh ! " said Mr. Brownlow, with a slight shudder ; " a couple of
glasses of port wine would have done him a great deal more good.
Wouldn't they, Tom White, eh ? "

" My name is Oliver, sir," replied the little invalid : with a look of
great astonishment.

" Oliver," said Mr. Brownlow ; " Oliver what ? Oliver White,
eh?"

" No sir. Twist, Oliver Twist."

" Queer name ! " said the old gentleman. " What raade you tell the
magistrate your name was White ? "

" I never told him so, sir," returned Oliver in amazement.

This sounded so like a falsehood, that the old gentleman looked
somewhat sternly in Oliver's face. It was impossible to doubt him ;
there was truth in every one of its thin and sharpened lineaments.

" Some mistake," said Mr. Brownlow. But, although his motive for
looking steadily at Oliver no longer existed, the old idea of the
resemblance between his features and some familiar face came upon
him so strongly, that he could not mthdraw his gaze.

" I hope you are not angry with me, sir ? " said Oliver, raising his
eyes beseechingly.

*' No, no," replied the old gentleman. " Why ! what's this ? Bed-
win, look there ! "

As he spoke, he pointed hastily to the picture over Oliver's head,
and then to the boy's face. There was its living copy. The eyes,
the head, the mouth ; every feature was the same. The expression
was, for the instant, so precisely alike, that the minutest line seemed
copied with startling accuracy !

Oliver knew not the cause of this sudden exclamation; for, not
being strong enough to bear the start it gave him, he fainted away.
A weakness on his part, which affords the narrative an opportunity of
relieving the reader from suspense, in behalf of the two young pupils
of the Merry Old Gentleman ; and of recording —

That when the Dodger, and his accomplished friend Master Bates,
joined in the hue-and-cry which was raised at Oliver's heels, in con-
sequence of their executing an illegal conveyance of Mr. Brownlow's
personal property, as has been already described, they were actuated
by a very laudable and becoming regard for themselves ; and foras-
much as the freedom of the subject and the liberty of the individual
are among the first and proudest boasts of a true-hearted Englishman,
80, I need hardly beg the reader to observe, that this action should
tend to exalt them in the opinion of all public and patriotic men, in

The Dodger and Charley Bates. 73

almoBt as great a degree as this strong proof of their anxiety for their
own preservation and safety goes to corroborate and confirm the little
code of laws which certain profound and sonnd-judging philosophers
have laid down as the main-springs of all Nature's deeds and actions :
the said philosophers very wisely reducing the good lady's proceedings
to matters of maxim and theory : and, by a very neat and pretty com-
pliment to her exalted wisdom and understanding, putting entirely out
of sight any considerations of heart, or generous impulse and feeling.
For, these are matters totally beneath a female who is acknowledged
by universal admission to be far above the numerous little foibles and
weaknesses of her sex.

If I wanted any further proof of the strictly philosophical nature
of the conduct of these young gentlemen in their very delicate pre-
dicament, I should at once find it in the fact (also recorded in a fore-
going part of this narrative), of their quitting the pursuit, when the
general attention was fixed upon Oliver ; and making immediately for
their home by the shortest possible cut. Although I do not mean to
assert that it is usually the practice of renowned and learned sages,
to shorten the road to any great conclusion (their course indeed being
rather to lengthen the distance, by various circumlocutions and dis-
cursive staggerings, like unto those in which di-unken men under the
pressure of a too mighty flow of ideas, are prone to indulge) ; still, I
do mean to say, and do say distinctly, that it is the invariable practice
of many mighty philosophers, in carrying out their theories, to evince
great wisdom and foresight in providing against every possible con-
tingency which can be supposed at all likely to affect themselves.
Thus, to do a great right, you may do a little wrong ; and you may
take any means which the end to be attained, will justify ; the amount
of the right, or the amount of the wrong, or indeed the distinction
between the two, being left entirely to the philosopher concerned, to
be settled and determined by his clear, comprehensive, and impartial
view of his own particular case.

It was not until the two boys had scoured, with great rapidity,
through a most intricate maze of narrow streets and courts, that they
ventured to halt beneath a low and dark archway. Having remained
silent here, just long enough to recover breath to speak, Master Bates
uttered an exclamation of amusement and delight ; and, bursting into
an uncontrollable fit of laughter, flung himself upon a door-step, and
rolled thereon in a transport of mirth.

" What's the matter ? " inquired the Dodger.

" Ha ! ha ! ha ! " roared Charley Bates.

" Hold your noise," remonstrated the Dodger, looking cautiously
round. " Do you want to be grabbed, stupid ? "

" I can't help it," said Charley, " I can't help it ! To see him
splitting away at that pace, and cutting round the corners, and
knocking up again the posts, and starting on again as if he was made
of iron as well as them, and me with the wipe in my pocket, singing

74 Oliver Twist.

out artcr him — oh, my oye ! " The vivid imagination of Master
Bates, presented the scene before him in too strong colours. As he
arrived at this apostrophe, he again rolled upon the door-step, and
laughed louder than before.

" What'U Fagin say ? " inquired the Dodgea- ; taking advantage of
the next interval of breathlessness on the part of his friend to pro-
pound the question.

" What ? " repeated Charley Bates.

" Ah, what ? " said the Dodger.

" Why, what should he say ? " inquired Charley : stopping rather
suddenly in his merriment ; for the Dodger's manner was impressive.
«' What should he say ? "

Mr. Dawkins whistled for a couple of minutes ; then, taking off his
hat, scratched his head, and nodded thrice.

" What do you mean ? " said Charley.

" Toor rul lol loo, gammon and spinnage, the frog he wouldn't, and
high cockolomm," said the Dodger: with a slight sneer on his
intellectual countenance.

This was explanatory, but not satisfactory. Master Bates felt it so ;
and again said, " What do you mean ? "

The Dodger made no reply; but putting his hat on again, and
gathering the skirts of his long-tailed coat under his arm, thrust his
tongue into his cheek, slapped the bridge of his nose some half-dozen
times in a familiar but expressive manner, and turning on his heel,
slunk down the court. Master Bates followed, with a thoughtfal
countenance.

The noise of footsteps on the creaking stairs, a few minutes after
the occurrence of this conversation, roused the merry old gentle-
man as he sat over the fire with a saveloy and a small loaf in his left
hand ; a pocket-knife in his right ; and a pewter pot on the trivet.
There was a rascally smile on his white face as he turned round,
and, looking sharply out from under his thick red eyebrows, bent his
ear towards the door, and listened.

" Why, how's this ? " muttered the Jew : changing countenance ;
" only two of 'em ? Where's the third ? They can't have got into
trouble. Hark!"

The footsteps approached nearer ; they reached the landing. The
door was slowly opened ; and the Dodger and Charley Bates entered,
closing it behind them.

CHAPTER Xin.

SOME NEW ACQUAINTANCES ABB INTRODUCED TO THE INTELIilQENT
BEADER, CONNECTED WITH WHOM, VARIOUS PLEASANT MATTERS ABB
RELATED, APrEBTAININQ TO THIS HISTORY.

" Where's Oliver ? " said the Jew, rising with a menacing look.
« Where's the boy ? "

The young thieves eyed their preceptor as if they were alarmed at
his violence ; and looked uneasily at each other. But they made no
reply.

"What's become of the boy?" said the Jew, seizing the Dodger
tightly by the collar, and threatening him with horrid imprecations.
" Speak out, or I'll throttle you ! "

Mr. Fagin looked so very much in earnest, that Charley Bates, who
deemed it prudent in all cases to bo on the safe side, and who con-
ceived it by no means improbable that it might be his turn to be
throttled second, dropped upon his knees, and raised a loud, well-
sustained, and continuous roar — something between a mad bull and
a speaking trumpet.

" Will you speak ? " thundered the Jew : shaking the Dodger so
much that his keeping in the big coat at all, seemed perfectly
miraculous.

" Why, the traps have got him, and that's all about it," said the
Dodger, sullenly. " Come, let go o' me, will you ! " And, swinging
himself, at one jerk, clean out of the big coat, which he left in the
Jew's hands, the Dodger snatched up the toasting fork, and made
a pass at the merry old gentleman's waistcoat ; which, if it had taken
effect, would have let a little more merriment out, than could havt>
been easily replaced.

The Jew stepped back in this emergency, with more agility than
could have been anticipated in a man of his apparent decrepitude ;
and, seizing up the pot, prepared to hurl it at his assailant's head. But
Charley Bates, at this moment, calling his attention by a perfectly
terrific howl, he suddenly altered its destination, and flung it full at
that young gentleman.

" Why, what the blazes is in the wind now ! " growled a deep voice.
" Who pitched that 'ere at me ? It's well it's the beer, and not the
pot, as hit me, or I'd have settled somebody. I might have know'd,
as nobody but an infernal, rich, plundering, thundering old Jew could
afford to throw away any drink but water — and not that, unless he
done the River Company every quarter. Wot's it all about, Fagin ?
D — me, if my neck-handkercher an't lined with beer ! Come in, you
sneaking warmint ; wot are you stopping outside for, as if you was
ashamed of your master ! Come in 1 "

'f& Oliver Tzvist.

The man who growled out these words, was a stoutly-built fellow
of about five-and-thirty, in a black velveteen coat, very soiled drab
breeches, lace-up half boots, and grey cotton stockings, which inclosed
a bulky pair of legs, with large swelling calves ; — the kind of legs,
which in such costume, always look in an unfinished and incomplete
state without a set of fetters to garnish them. He had a brown hat
on his head, and a dirty belcher handkerchief round his neck : with
the long frayed ends of which he smeared the beer from his face as ho
spoke. He disclosed, when he had done so, a broad heavy countenance
with a beard of three days' growtli, and two scowling eyes ; one of
which displayed various parti-coloured symptoms of having been
recently damaged by a blow.

" Come in, d'ye hear ? " growled this engaging ruflSan.

A white shaggy dog, with his face scratched and torn in twenty
different places, skulked into the room.

" Why didn't you come in afore ? " said the man, "You're getting
too proud to own me afore company, are you ? Lie down ! "

This command was accompanied with a kick, which sent the animal
to the other end of the room. He appeared well used to it, however ;
for he coiled himself up in a corner very quietly, without uttering a
sound, and winking his very ill-looking eyes twenty times in a minute,
appeared to occupy himself in taking a survey of the apartment.

" What are you up to ? Ill-treating the boys, you covetous,
avaricious, in-sa-ti-a-ble old fence ? " said the man, seating himself
deliberately. " I wonder they don't murder you ! I would if I was
them. If I'd been your 'prentice, I'd have done it long ago, and — no,
I couldn't have sold you afterwards, for you're fit for nothing but
keeping as a curiosity of ugKness in a glass bottle, and I suppose they
don't blow glass bottles large enough."

" Hush ! hush ! Mr. Sikes," said the Jew, trembling ; " don't speak
so loud."

" None of your mistering," replied the ruffian ; " you always mean
mischief when you come that. You know my name : out with it I I
shan't disgrace it when the time comes."

" Well, well, then — Bill Sikes," said the Jew, with abject humility.
" You seem out of humour, Bill."

" Perhaps I am," replied Sikes ; " I should think you was rather out
of sorts too, unless you mean as little harm when you throw pewter
pots about, as you do when you blab and "

" Are you mad ? " said the Jew, catching the man by the sleeve, and
pointing towards the boys.

Mr. Sikes contented himself with tying an imaginary knot under
his left ear, and jerking his head over on the right shoulder ; a piece
of dumb show which the Jew appeared to understand perfectly. Ho
then, in cant terms, with which his whole conversation was plentifully
besprinkled, but which would be quite unintelligible if they were
recorded here, demanded a glass of liquor.

Bill Sikes. yy

"And mind you don't poison it," said Mr. Sikcs, laying bis hat
upon the table.

Tbis was said in jest ; but if tbo speaker could bavo seen tbe evil
leer with wbieb tbe Jew bit bis pale lip as be turned round to tbe
cupboard, be migbt bave tbougbt tbe caution not wbolly unnecessary,
or tbe wisb (at all events) to improve upon tbe distiller's ingenuity
not very far from tbe old gentleman's merry beart.

After swallowing two or tbree glasses of spirits, Mr. Sikes con-
descended to take some notice of tbe young gentlemen ; wbicb gracious
act led to a conversation, in wbicb tbe cause and manner of Oliver's
captui'e were circumstantially detailed, witb such alterations and
improvements on tbe truth, as to tbe Dodger appeared most advisable
imder tbe circumstanpes.

" I'm afraid," said tbe Jew, " that be may say something which will
get us into trouble."

" That's very likely," returned Sikes witb a malicious grin. " You're
Wowed upon, Fagin."

" And I'm afraid, you see," added tbe Jew, speaking as if he bad
not noticed tbe interruption ; and regarding tbe other closely as he
did so, — " I'm afraid that, if tbe game was up witb us, it migbt be up
with a good many more, and that it would come out rather worse for
you than it would for me, my dear."

The man started, and turned round upon tbo Jew. But tbe old
gentleman's shoulders were shrugged up to bis ears; and his eyes
were vacantly staring on the opposite wall.

There was a long pause. Every member of the respectable coterie
appeared plunged in his own reflections ; not excepting tbe dog, who
by a certain malicious licking of his lips seemed to be meditating an
attack upon the legs of the first gentleman or lady be might encounter
in the streets when he went out.

" Somebody must find out wot's been done at the office," said Mr.
Sikes in a much lower tone than be bad taken since be came in.

Tbe Jew nodded assent.

" If he hasn't peached, and is committed, there's no fear till bo
comes out again," said Mr. Sikes, " and then be must be taken care
on. You must get hold of him somehow."

Again the Jew nodded.

Tbe prudence of tbis line of action, indeed, was obvious ; but, un-
fortunately, there was one very strong objection to its being adopted.
Tbis was, that tbe Dodger, and Charley Bates, and Fagin, and Mr.
William Sikes, happened, one and all, to entertain a violent and
deeply-rooted antipathy to going near a police-office on any ground
or pretext whatever.

How long they migbt bave sat and looked at each other, in a state
of uncertainty not tbe most pleasant of its kind, it is difficult to guess.
It is not necessary to make any guesses on the subject, however ; for
the sudden entrance of the two young ladies whom Olive " bad seen
on a former occasion, caused the conversation to flow afresh.

78 Oliver Tivist.

" The very thing ! " said the Jew. " Bet will go ; won't yoUj my
dear?"

" Wheres ? " inquired the young lady,

" Only just up to the office, my dear," said the Jew coaxlugly.

It is due to the young lady to say that she did not positively affirm
that she would not, but that she merely expressed an emphatic and
earnest desire to be " blessed " if she would ; a polite and delicate
evasion of the request, which shows the young lady to have been
possessed of that natural good breeding which cannot bear to inflict
upon a fellow-creature, the pain of a direct and pointed refusal.

The Jew's countenance fell. He turned from this young lady, who
was gaily, not to say gorgeously attired, in a red gown, green boots,
and yellow curl-papers, to the other female.

" Nancy, my dear," said the Jew in a soothing manner, " what do
you say ? "

" That it won't do ; so it's no use a-trying it on, Fagin," replied
Nancy.

" What do you mean by that ? " said Mr. Sikes, looking up in a
surly manner.

" What I say, Bill," replied the lady collectedly.

"Why, you're just the very person for it," reasoned Mr. Sites:
" nobody about here knows anything of you."

" And as I don't want 'em to, neither," replied Nancy in the same
composed manner, " it's rather more no than yes with me, Bill."

" She'll go, Fagin," said Sikes.

" No, she won't, Fagin," said Nancy.

" Yes she will, Fagin," said Sikes.

And Mr. Sikes was right. By dint of alternate threats, promises,
and bribes, the lady in question was ultimately prevailed upon to
undertake the commission. She was not, indeed, withheld by the
same considerations as her agreeable friend ; for, having recently
removed into the neighbourhood of Field Lane from the remote but
genteel suburb of Eatcliflfe, she was not under the same apprehension
of being recognised by any of her numerous acquaintance.

Accordingly, with a clean white apron tied over her gown, and her
curl-papers tucked up under a straw bonnet, — both articles of dress
being provided from the Jew's inexhaustible stock, — Miss Nancy pre-
pared to issue forth on her errand.

" Stop a minute, my dear," said the Jew, producing a little covered
basket. "Carry that in one hand. It looks more respectable, my
dear."

"Give her a door-key to carry in her t'other one, Fagin," said
Sikes ; " it looks real and genivine like."

"Yes, yes, my dear, so it does," said the Jew, hanging a large
street-door key on the forefinger of the young lady's right hand.
" There ; very good ! Very good indeed, my dear ! " said the Jew,
rubbing his hands.

Nancy. 79

" Oh, my brother ! My poor, dear, sweet, innocent little brother ! "
exclaimed Nancy, bursting into tears, and wringing the little basket
and the street-door key in an agony of distress. " What has become
of him ! "Where have they taken him to ! Oh, do have pity, and tell
me what's been done with the dear boy, gentlemen ; do, gentlemen, if
you please, gentlemen ! "

Having uttered these words in a most lamentable and heart-broken
tone: to the immeasurable delight of her hearers: Miss Nancy
paused, winked to the company, nodded smilingly round, and dis-
appeared.

" Ai ! she's a clever girl, my dears," said the Jew, tm-ning round
to his young friends, and shaking his head gravely, as if in mute
admonition to them to follow the bright example they had just boheld.

" She's a honour to her sex," said Mr. Sikes, filling his glass, and
smiting the table with his enormous fist. " Here's her health, and
wishing they was all like her ! "

While these, and many other encomiums, were being passed on the
accomplished Nancy, that young lady made the best of her way to the
police-office ; whither, notwithstanding a little natural timidity con-
sequent upon walking through the streets alone and unprotected, she
arrived in perfect safety shortly afterwards.

Entering by the back way, she tapped softly with the key at one
of the cell-doors, and listened. There was no sound within : so she
coughed and listened again. Still there was no reply : so she spoke.

" Nolly, dear ? " murmured Nancy in a gentle voice ; " Nolly ? "

There was nobody inside but a miserable shoeless criminal, who
had been taken up for playing the flute, and who, the offence against
society having been clearly proved, had been very properly committed
by Mr. Fang to the House of Correction for one month; with the
appropriate and amusing remark that since he had so much breath to
spare, it would be more wholesomely expended on the treadmill than
in a musical instrument. He made no answer: being occupied in
mentally bewailing the loss of the flute, which had been confiscated
for the use of the county : so Nancy passed on to the next cell, and
knocked there.

" Well ! " cried a ftiint and feeble voice.

" Is there a little boy here ? " inquired Nancy, with a preliminary
sob.

" No," replied the voice ; " God forbid."

This was a vagrant of sixty-five, who was going to prison for not
playing the flute ; or, in other words, for Tjegging in the streets, and
doing nothing for his livelihood. In the next cell, was another man,
who was going to the same prison for hawking tin saucepans without
a license ; thereby doing something for his living, in defiance of the
Stamp-office.

But, as neither of these criminals answered to the name of Oliver,
or knew anything about him, Nancy made straight up to the bluff

8o Oliver Twist.

of&cer in the striped waistcoat ; and with tho most piteous wailings
and lamentations, rendered more piteous by a prompt and efficient
nso of the street-door key and the Kttle basket, demanded her own
dear brother.

" I haven't got him, my dear," said the old man.

*' Where is he ? " screamed Nancy, in a distracted manner.

" Why, the gentleman's got him," replied the officer.

" What gentleman ? Oh, gracious heavens ! What gentleman ? "
exclaimed Nancy.

In reply to this incoherent questioning, the old man informed the
deeply affected sister that Oliver had been taken ill in the office, and
discharged in consequence of a witness having proved the robbery to
have been committed by another boy, not in custody ; and that the
prosecutor had carried him away, in an insensible condition, to his
own residence : of and concerning which, all the informant know was,
that it was somewhere at Pentonville, he having heard that word
mentioned in the directions to tho coachman.

In a dreadful state of doubt and uncertainty, the agonised young
woman staggered to the gate, and then, exchanging her faltering walk
for a swift run, returned by the most devious and complicated route
she could think of, to the domicile of the Jew.

Mr. Bill Sikes no sooner heard the account of the expedition
delivered, than he very hastily called up the white dog, and, putting
on his hat, expeditiously departed : without devoting any time to the
formality of wishing the company good-morning.

" We must know where he is, my dears ; he must be found," said
the Jew greatly excited. " Charley, do nothing but skulk about, till
you bring home some news of him ! Nancy, my dear, I must have
him found. I trust to you, my dear, — to you and the Artful for
everything ! Stay, stay," added the Jew, unlocking a drawer with a
shaking hand ; " there's money, my dears. I shall shut up this shop
to-night. You'll know where to find me! Don't stop here a
minute. Not an instant, my dears ! "

With these words, he pushed them from the room : and carefully
double-locking and barring the door behind them, drew from its place
of concealment the box which he had unintentionally disclosed to
Oliver. Then, he hastily proceeded to dispose the watches and
jewellery beneath his clothing.

A rap at the door startled him in this occupation. " Who's there ? "
he cried in a shrill tone.

" Me ! " replied the voice of the Dodger, through the key-hole.

" What now ? " cried the Jew impatiently.

" Is he to be kidnapped to the other ken, Nancy says ? " inquired
the Dodger.

" Yes," replied the Jew, " wherever she lays hands on him. Find
him, find him out, that's all ! I shall know what to do next ; never
fear."

Still improving. 3 1

Tte t)oy murmured a reply of intelligence; and hurried down-
stairs after Lis companions.

"Ho has not peached so far," said the Jew as he pursued his
occupation. " If he means to blab us among his new friends, Ave may
stop his mouth yet."

CHAPTER XIV.

COMPRISlNa FURTHBB PABTICDLAliS OP OLIVER'S STAY AT MR. BROWl^-
LOW'S, WITH THE REMARKABLE PREDICTIOX WHICH ONE MR GRIM-
WIG UTTERED CONCERNING HIM, WHEN HE WENT OUT ON AN
ERRAND.

Oliver soon recovering from the fainting-fit into which Mr. Brown-
low's abrupt exclamation had thrown him, the subject of the picture
was carefully avoided, both by the old gentleman and Mrs. Bedwin,
in the conversation that ensued : which indeed bore no reference to
Oliver's history or prospects, but was confined to such topics as might
amuse without exciting him. He was still too weak to get up to
breakfast ; but, when he came down into the housekeeper's room next
day, his first act was to cast an eager glance at the wall, in the hope
of again looking on the face of the beautiful lady. His expectations
were disappointed, however, for the picture had been removed.

" Ah ! " said the housekeeper, watching the direction of Oliver's
eyes. " It is gone, you see."

" I see it is, ma'am," replied Oliver. " Why have they taken it
away?"

" It has been taken down, child, because Mr. Brownlow said, that
as it seemed to worry you, perhaps it might prevent your getting well,
you know," rejoined the old lady.

" Oh, no, indeed. It didn't worry me, ma'am," said Oliver. " I
liked to see it. I quite loved it."

" Well, well ! " said the old lady, good-humouredly ; " you get well
as fast as ever you can, dear, and it shall be hung up again. There !
I promise you that ! Now, let us talk about something else."

This was all the information Oliver could obtain about the picture
at that time. As the old lady had been so kind to him in his illness,
he endeavoured to think no more of the subject just then ; so he
listened attentively to a great many stories she told him, about an
amiable and handsome daughter of hers, who was married to an
amiable and handsome man, and lived in the country ; and about
a son, who was clerk to a merchant in the West Indies ; and who was,
also, such a good young man, and wrote such dutiful letters home four
times a-year, that it brought tlio tears into her eyes to talk about

a

82 Oliver Twist.

them. When the old lady had expatiated, a long time, on the ex-
cellences of her children, and the merits of her kind good husband
besides, who had been dead and gone, poor dear soul ! just six-and-
twenty years, it was time to have tea. After tea she began to teach
Oliver cribbage : which he learnt as quickly as she could teach : and
at which game they played, mth gi-eat interest and gravity, until it
was time for the invalid to have some warm wine and water, with
a slice of dry toast, and then to go cosily to bed.

They were happy days, those of Oliver's recovery. Everything
was so quiet, and neat, and orderly ; everybody was kind and gentle ;
that after the noise and turbulence in the midst of which he had
always lived, it seemed like Heaven itself. He was no sooner strong
enough to put his clothes on, properly, than Mr. Brownlow caused
a complete new suit, and a new cap, and a new pair of shoes, to bo
provided for him. As Oliver was told that he might do what he liked
with the old clothes, he gave them to a servant who had been very
kind to him, and asked her to sell them to a Jew, and keep the money
for herself. This she very readily did; and, as Oliver looked out
of the parlour window, and saw the Jew roll them up in his bag and
walk away, he felt quite delighted to think that they were safely gone,
and that there was now no possible danger of his ever being able to
wear them again. They were sad rags, to tell the truth ; and Oliver
had never had a new suit before.

One evening, about a week after the affair of the picture, as he was
sitting talldng to Mrs. Bedwin, there came a message down from Mr.
Brownlow, that if Oliver Twist felt pretty well, he should like to see
him in his study, and talk to him a little while.

" Bless us, and save us ! Wash your hands, and let me part your
hair nicely for you, child," said Mrs. Bedwin. " Dear heart alive !
If we had known he would have asked for you, we would have put
you a clean collar on, and made you as smart as sixpence ! "

Oliver did as the old lady bade him ; and, although she lamented
grievously, meanwhile, that there was not even time to crimp the
little frill that bordered his shirt-collar ; he looked so delicate and
handsome, despite that important personal advantage, that she went
so far as to say : looking at him with great complacency from head
to foot, that she really didn't think it would have been possible,
on the longest notice, to have made much difference in him for the
better.

Thus encouraged, Oliver tapped at the study door. On Mr. Brown-
low calling to him to come in, he found himself in a little back room,
quite fall of books, with a window, looking into some pleasant little
gardens. There was a table drawn up before the window, at which
Mr. Brownlow was seated reading. When he saw Oliver, he pushed
the book away from him, and told him to come near the table, and
sit down. Oliver complied ; marvelling where the people could be
fonnd to read such a great number of books as seemed to be written

In Mr. Brownlows Study. 83

to make the world wiser. Which is still a marvel to more experienced
people than Oliver Twist, every day of their lives.

" There are a good many books, are there not, my boy ? " said Mr.
Browulow, observing the curiosity with which Oliver surveyed the
shelves that reached from the floor to the ceiling.

" A great number, sir," replied Oliver. " I never saw so many."

" You shall read them, if you behave well," said the old gentleman
kindly ; " and you will like that, better than looking at the outsides,
— that is, in some cases ; because there are books of which the baclcs
and covers are by far the best parts."

" I suppose they are those heavy ones, sir," said Oliver, pointing
to some large quartos, with a good deal of gilding about the binding.

" Not always those," said the old gentleman, patting Oliver on the
head, and smiling as he did so ; " there are other equally heavy ones,
though of a much smaller size. How should you like to grow up
a clever man, and write books, eh ? "

" I think I would rather read them, sir," replied Oliver.

" What ! wouldn't you like to be a book-writer ? " said the old
gentleman.

Oliver considered a little while ; and at last said, he should think
it would be a much better thing to be a book-seller ; upon which the
old gentleman laughed heartily, and declared he had said a very good
thing. Which Oliver felt glad to have done, though he by no means
knew what it was.

"Well, well," said the old gentleman, composing his features.
" Don't be afraid ! We won't make an author of you, while there's
an honest trade to be learnt, or brick-making to turn to."

" Thank you, sir," said Oliver. At the earnest manner of his reply,
the old gentleman laughed again ; and said something about a curious
instinct, which Oliver, not understanding, paid no very great atten-
tion to.

" Now," said Mr. Brownlow, speaking if possible in a kinder, but
at the same time in a much more serious manner, than Oliver had
ever known him assume yet, " I want you to pay great attention, my
boy, to what I am going to say. I shall talk to you without any
reserve ; because I am sure you are as well able to understand me,
as many older persons would be."

" Oh, don't tell me you are going to send me away, sir, pray ! "
exclaimed Oliver, alarmed at the serious tone of the old gentleman's
commencement! "Don't turn me out of doors to wander in the
streets again. Let me stay here, and be a servant. Don't send me
back to the wretched place I came from. Have mercy upon a poor
boy, sir 1 "

" My dear child," said the old gentleman, moved by the warmth of
Oliver's sudden appeal ; " you need not be afraid of my deserting you,
unless you give me cause."

" I never, never will, sir," interposed Oliver.

84 Oliver Twist

"I hope rldt,'* rejoined the old gentleman. "I do not think you
ever will. I have been deceived, before, in the objects whom I have
endeavoured to benefit; but I feel strongly disposed to trust you,
nevertheless ; and I am more interested in your behalf than I can
well account for, even to myself. The persons on whom I have
^bestowed my dearest love, lie deep in their graves ; but, although the
happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made
a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up, for ever, on my best affections.
Deep affliction has but strengthened and refined them."

As the old gentleman said this in a low voice : more to himself
than to his companion : and as he remained silent for a short time
afterwards : Oliver sat quite still.

" Well, well ! " said the old gentleman at length, in a more cheerful
tone, " I only say this, because you have a young heart ; and knowing
that I have suffered great pain and sorrow, you will be more careful,
perhaps, not to wound me again. You say you are an orphan, without
a friend in the world ; all the inquiries I have been able to make, confirm
the statement. Let me hear your story ; where you come from ; who
brought you up ; and how you got into the company in which I found
you. Speak the truth, and you shall not be friendless while I live."

Oliver's sobs checked his utterance for some minutes ; when he was
on the point of beginning to relate how he had been brought up at
the farm, and carried to the workhouse by Mr. Bumble, a peculiarly
impatient little double-knock was heard at the street-door ; and the
servant, running up-stairs, announced Mr. Grim wig.

" Is he coming up ? " inquired Mr. Brownlow.

" Yes, sir," replied the servant. " He asked if there were any
muffins in the house ; and, when I told him yes, he said he had come
to tea."

Mr. Brownlow smiled ; and, turning to Oliver, said that Mr.
Grimwig was an old friend of his, and he must not mind his being
a little rough in his manners ; for he was a worthy creature at bottom,
as he had reason to know.

" Shall I go down-stairs, sir ? " inquired Oliver.

" No," replied Mr. Brownlow, " I would rather you remained here."

At this moment, there walked into the room : supporting himself
by a thick stick : a stout old gentleman, rather lame in one leg, who
was dressed in a blue coat, striped waistcoat, nankeen breeches and
gaiters, and a broad-brimmed white hat, with the sides turned up with
green. A very small-plaited shirt frill stuck out from his waistcoat ;
and a very long steel watch-chain, with nothing but a key at the end,
dangled loosely below it. The ends of his white neckerchief were
twisted into a ball about the size of an orange ; the variety of shapes
into which his countenance was twisted, defy description. He had a
manner of s Brewing his head on one side when he spoke ; and of
looking out of the corners of his eyes at the same time : which
irresistibly reminded the beholder of a parrot. In this attitude, he

Mr. Grimivig. 85

fixed himself, the moment he made his appearance ; and, holding
out a small piece of orange-peel at arm's length, exclaimed, in a
growling, discontented voice,

"Look here! do you see this! Isn't it a most wonderful and
extraordinary thing that I can't call at a man's house but I find a
piece of this poor surgeon 's-friend on the staircase ? I've been lamed
with orange-peel once, and I know orange-peel will bo my death at
last. It will, sir : orange-peel will be my death, or I'll be content
to eat my own head, sir ! "

This was the handsome offer with which Mr. Grimwig backed and
confirmed nearly every assertion he made ; and it was the more
singular in his case, because, even admitting for the sake of argument,
the possibility of scientific improvements being ever brought to that
I)ass which will enable a gentleman to eat his own head in the event
of his being so disposed, Mr. Grimwig's head was such a particularly
large one, that the most sanguine man alive could hardly entertain a
hope of being able to get through it at a sitting — to put entirely out
of the question, a very thick coating of powder.

" I'll eat my head, sir," repeated Mr. Grimwig, striking his stick
upon the ground. " Hallo ! what's that ! " looking at Oliver, and
retreating a pace or two.

" Tliis is young Oliver Twist, whom we were speaking about," said
Mr. Brownlow.

Oliver bowed.

" You don't mean to say that's the boy who had the fever, I hope ? "
said Mr. Grimwig, recoiling a little more. " Wait a minute ! Don't
speak ! Stop — " continued Mr. Grimwig, abruptly, losing all di-ead
of the fever in his triumph at the discovery ; " that's the boy who had
the orange I If that's not the boy, sir, who had the orange, and threw
this bit of peel upon the staircase, I'll eat my head, and his too."

" No, no, he has not had one," said Mr. Brownlow, laughing.
" Come ! Put down your hat ; and speak to my young friend."

" I feel strongly on this subject, sir," said the irritable old gentle-
man, drawing off his gloves. " There's always more or less orange-
peel on the pavement in our street ; and I know it's put there by the
surgeon's boy at the corner. A young woman stumbled over a bit last
night, and fell against my garden-railings ; directly she got up I saw
her look towards his infernal red lamp with the pantomime-light.
' Don't go to him,' I called out of the window, ' he's an assassin ! A

man-trap ! ' So he is. If he is not " Here the irascible old

gentleman gave a great knock on the ground with his stick ; which
was always understood, by his friends, to imply the customary offer,
whenever it was not expressed in words. Then, still keeping his
stick in his hand, ho sat down ; and, opening a double eye-glass,
which he wore attached to a broad black riband, took a view of
Oliver : who, seeing tht^t l^e was the object of inspectioUj colouredj t^d
bowed again.

86 Oliver Twist.

" That's the boy, is it ? " said Mr. Grimwig, at length.

" That's the boy," replied Mr. Brownlow.

" How are you, boy ? " said Mr, Grimwig.

" A great deal better, thank you, sir," replied Oliver.

Mr. Brownlow, seeming to apprehend that his singular friend was
about to say something disagreeable, asked Oliver to step down-stairs
and tell Mrs. Bed win they were ready for tea ; which, as he did not
half like the visitor's manner, he was very happy to do.

" He is a nice-looking boy, is he not ? " inquired Mr. Brownlow.

" I don't know," replied Mr. Grimwig , pettishly.

" Don't know ? "

" No. I don't know. I never see any difference in boys. I only
know two sorts of boys. Mealy boys, and beef-faced boys."

" And which is Oliver ? "

" Mealy. I know a friend who has a beef-faced boy ; a fine boy,
they call him ; with a round head, and red cheeks, and glaring eyes ;
a horrid boy ; with a body and limbs that appear to be swelling out
of the seams of his blue clothes ; with the voice of a pilot, and tho
appetite of a wolf. I know him ! The wretch ! "

" Come," said Mr. Brownlow, " these are not the characteristics of
young Oliver Twist ; so he needn't excite your wrath."

" They are not," replied Mr. Grimwig. " He may have woree."

Here, Mr. Brownlow coughed impatiently ; w^hich appeared to
afford Mr. Grimwig the most exquisite delight.

"He may have worse, I say," repeated Mr. Grimwig. "Where
does he come from ? Who is he ? What is he ? He has had a fever.
What of that ? Fevers are not peculiar to good people ; are they ?
Bad people have fevers sometimes ; haven't they, eh ? I knew a man
who was hung in Jamaica for murdering his master. He had had a
fever six times ; he wasn't recommended to mercy on that account.
Pooh ! nonsense ! "

Now, the fact was, that in the inmost recesses of his own heart,
Mr. Grimwig was strongly disposed to admit that Oliver's appearance
and manner were unusually prepossessing ; but he had a strong
appetite for contradiction, sharpened on this occasion by the finding
of the orange-peel ; and, inwardly determining that no man should
dictate to him whether a boy was well-looking or not, he had resolved,
from the first, to oppose his friend. When Mr. Brownlow admitted
that on no one point of inquiry could he yet return a satisfactory
answer; and that he had postponed any investigation into Oliver's
previous history until he thought the boy was strong enough to bear it ;
Mr. Grimwig chuckled maliciously. And he demanded, with a sneer,
whether the housekeeper was in the habit of counting the plate at
night ; because, if she didn't find a table-spoon or two missing some
sunshiny morning, why, he would be content to — and so forth.

All this, Mr. Brownlow, although himself somewhat of an im-
petuous gentleman : knowing his friend's peculiarities, bore with great

VesP or No? 87

good humour; as Mr. Grimwig, at tea, was graciously pleased to
express bis entire approval of the muffins, matters wont on very
smoothly; and Oliver, who made one of the party, began to feel
more at his case than he had yet done in the fierce old gentleman's
presence.

"And when are you going to hear a full, true, and particular
account of the life and adventures of Oliver Twist ? " asked Grimwig
of Mr. Brownlow, at the conclusion of the meal : looking sideways at
Oliver, as he resumed the subject.

" To-morrow morning," replied Mr. Brownlow. " I would rather
he was alone with me at the time. Come up to me to-morrow morning
at ten o'clock, my dear."

"Yes, sir," replied Oliver. He answered with some hesita-
tion, because he was confused by Mr. Grimwig's looking so hard at
him.

" I'll tell you what," whispered that gentleman to Mr. Brownlow ;
" he won't come up to you to-morrow morning. I saw him hesitate.
He is deceiving you, my good friend."

" I'll swear he is not," replied Mr. Brownlow, warmly.

" If he is not," said Mr. Grimwig, " I'll " and down went the

stick.

" I'll answer for that boy's truth with my life ! " said Mr. Brownlow,
knocking the table.

" And I for his falsehood with my head ! " rejoined Mr. Grimwig,
knocking the table also.

" We shall see," said Mr. Brownlow, checking his rising anger.

" Wo will," replied Mr. Grimwig, with a provoking smile ; " we
will."

As fate would have it, Mrs. Bedwin chanced to bring in, at this
moment, a small parcel of books, which Mr. Brownlow had that morn-
ing purchased of the identical bookstall-keeper, who has already
figured in this history ; having laid them on the table, she prepared
to leave the room.

•' Stop the boy, Mrs. Bedwin ! " said Mr. Brownlow ; " there is
something to go back."

" He has gone, sir," replied Mi'S. Bedwin.

" Call after him," said Mr. Brownlow ; " it's particular. He is a
poor man, and they are not paid for. There are some books to be
taken back, too."

The street door was opened. Oliver ran one way; and the girl
ran another ; and Mrs. Bedwin stood on the step and screamed for
the boy ; but there was no boy in sight. Oliver and the girl returned,
in a breathless state, to report that there were no tidings of him.

" Dear me, I am very sorry for that," exclaimed Mr. Brownlow ;
" I particularly wished those books to be returned to-night."

" Send Oliver with them," said Mr. Grimwig, with an ironical
smile ; " he will be sure to deliver them safely, you know."

88 Oliver Twist,

" Yes ; do let me take them, if you please, sir," said Oliver. " I'll
run all the way, sir."

The old gentleman was just going to say that Oliver should not go
out on any account ; when a most malicious cough from Mr. Grimwig
determined him that he should ; and that, by liis prompt discharge of
the commission, he should prove to him the injustice of his suspicions :
on this head at least : at once.

" You shall go, my dear," said the old gentleman. " The books aro
on a chair by my table. Fetch them down."

Oliver, delighted to be of use, brought down the books under his
arm in a great bustle ; and waited, cap in hand, to hear what message
he was to take.

" You are to say," said Mr. Brownlow, glancing steadily at Grim-
wig ; " you are to say that you have brought those books back ; and
that you have come to pay the four pound ten I owe him. This is a
five-pound note, so you will have to bring me back, ten shillings
change."

" I won't be ten minutes, sir," said Oliver, eagerly. Having buttoned
up the bank-note in his jacket pocket, and placed the books carefully
under his arm, he made a respectful bow, and left the room. Mrs.
Bedwin followed him to the street-door, giving him many directions
about the nearest way, and the name of the bookseller, and the name
of the street : all of which Oliver said he clearly understood. Having
superadded many injunctions to be sure and not take cold, the old
lady at length permitted hirn to depart.

" Bless his sweet face ! " said the old lady, looking after him. " I
can't bear, somehow, to let him go out of my sight."

At this moment, Oliver looked gaily round, and nodded before he
turned the corner. The old lady smilingly returned his salutation,
and, closing the door, went back, to her own room.

" Let me see ; he'll be back in twenty minutes, at the longest," said
Mr. Brownlow, pulling out his watch, and placing it on the table.
" It will be dark by that time."

" Oh ! you really expect him to come back, do you ? " inquii-ed Mr.
Grimwig.

" Don't you ? " asked Mr. Brownlow, smiling.

The spirit of contradiction was strong in Mr. Grimv/ig's breast, at
the moment ; and it was rendered stronger by his friend's confident
smile.

" No," he said, smiting the table with his fist, " I do not. The boy
has a new suit of clothes on his back, a set of valuable books under
his arm, and a five-pound note in his pocket. He'll join his old friends
the thieves, and laugh at you. If ever that boy returns to this house,
sir, I'll eat my head."

With these words he drew his chair closer to the table ; and there
the two friends sat, in silent expectation, with the Avatch betweeu
them,

No. 89

It is worthy of remark, as illustrating the importance we attach to
our own judgments, and the pride with which wo put forth our most
rash and hasty conclusions, that, although Mr. Grimwig was not by
any means a bad-hearted man, and though he would have been un-
feignedly sorry to see his respected friend duped and deceived, he
really did most earnestly and strongly hope at that moment, that
Oliver Twist might not come back.

It grew so dark, that the figures on the dial-plate were scarcely
discernible; but there the two old gentlemen continued to sit, in
silence, with the watch between them.

CHAPTER XV.

SHOWING HOW VERT FOND OF OLIVER TWIST, THE MERRY OLD JEW AND
MISS NANCY WEBB.

In the obscure parlour of a low public-house, in the filthiest part of
Little Safiron Hill ; a dark and gloomy den, where a flaring gas-light
burnt all day in the winter-time ; and where no ray of sun ever shone
in the summer : there sat, brooding over a little pewter measure and
a small glass, strongly impregnated with the smell of liquor, a man
in a velveteen coat, drab shorts, half-boots and stockings, whom even
by that dim light no experienced agent of the police would have
hesitated to recognise as Mr. William Sikes. At his feet, sat a white-
coated, red-eyed dog ; who occupied himself, altei-nately, in \^anking
at his master with both eyes at the same time ; and in licking a large,
fresh cut on one side of his mouth, which appeared to be the result of
some recent conflict.

" Keep quiet, you warmint ! Keep quiet ! " said Mr. Sikes, suddenly
breaking 'silence. Whether his meditations were so intense as to bo
disturbed by the dog's winking, or whether his feelings were so
wrought upon by his reflections that they required all the relief
derivable from kicking an unofiending animal to allay them, is matter
for argument and consideration. Whatever was the cause, the effect
was a kick and a curse, bestowed upon the dog simultaneously.

Dogs are not generally apt to revenge injuries inflicted upon them
by their masters; but Mr. Sikes's dog, having faults of temper in
common with his owner, and labouring, perhaps, at this moment,
under a powerful sense of injury, made no more ado but at once fixed
his teeth in one of the half-boots. Having given it a hearty shake, he
retired, growling, under a form ; just escaping the pewter measure
which Mr. Sikes levelled at his head.

" You would, would you ? " said Sikes, seizing the poker in one
Jiand, and deliberately opening witli the other a large clasp-knife,

90 Oliver Twist,

which he drew from his pocket. " Come here, you l)orn devil ! Como
here ! D'ye hear ? "

The dog no doubt heard ; because Mr. Sikes spoke in the very
harshest key of a very harsh voice ; but, appearing to entertain some
unaccountable objection to having his throat cut, he remained where
he was, and growled more fiercely than before : at the same time
grasping the end of the poker between his teeth, and biting at it like
a \vild beast.

This resistance only infuriated Mr. Sikes the more ; who, dropping
on his knees, began to assail the animal most furiously. The dog
jumped from right to left, and from left to right ; snapping, growling,
and barking ; the man thrust and swore, and struck and blasphemed ;
and the straggle was reaching a most critical point for one or other ;
when, the door suddenly opening, the dog darted out : leaving Bill
Sikes with the poker and the clasp-knife in his hands.

There must always be two parties to a quarrel, says the old adage.
Mr. Sikes, being disappointed of the dog's participation, at once trans-
ferred his share in the quarrel to the new-comer.

" What the devil do you come in between me and my dog for ? "
said Sikes, with a fierce gesture.

" I didn't know, my dear, I didn't know," replied Fagin, humbly ;
for the Jew was the new>-comer.

" Didn't know, you white-livered thief! " growled Sikes. " Couldn't
yon hear the noise ? "

" Not a sound of it, as I'm a living man. Bill," replied the Jew.

" Oh no ! You hear nothing, you don't," retorted Sikes with a fierce
sneer. " Sneaking in and out, so as nobody hears how you come or
go ! I wish you had been the dog, Fagin, half a minute ago."

" "Why ? " inquired the Jew with a forced smile.

" 'Cause the government, as cares for the lives of such men as you,
as haven't half the pluck of curs, lets a man kill a dog how he likes,"
replied Sikes, shutting up the knife with a very expressive look;
" that's why."

The Jew rubbed his hands ; and, sitting down at the table, affected
to laugh at the pleasantry of his friend. He was obviously very ill
at ease, however.

*' Grin away," said Sikes, replacing the poker, and surveying him
with savage contempt ; " grin away. You'll never have the laugh at
me, though, unless it's behind a nightcap. I've got the upper hand
over you, Fagin ; and, d — me, I'll keep it. There ! If I go, you
go ; so take care of me."

" Well, well, my dear," said the Jew, " I know all that ; we — we —
have a mutual interest. Bill, — a mutual interest."

" Humph," said Sikes, as if he thought the interest lay rather more
on the Jew's side than on his. " Well, what have you got to say to
me?"

" It's all passed safe through the melting-pot," replied Fagin, " and

Birds of a Feather. 9 1

this is yonr share. It's rather more than it ought to be, my dear ;
but as I know you'll do me a good turn another time, and "

" Stow that gammon," interposed the robber, impatiently. " "Where
is it ? Hand over ! "

" Yes, -yes, Bill ; give me time, give me time," replied the Jew,
soothingly. " Here it is 1 All safe ! " As he spoke, he drew forth an
old cotton handkerchief from his breast ; and untying a large knot in
one corner, produced a small brown-paper packet. Sikos, snatching it
from him, hastily opened it ; and proceeded to count the sovereigns
it contained.

" This is all, is it ? " inquired Sikes.

" All," replied the Jew.

" You haven't opened the parcel and swallowed one or two as you
come along, have you ? " inquired Sikes, suspiciously. " Don't put
on an injured look at the question ; you've done it many a time.
Jerk the tinkler."

These M'ords, in plain English, conveyed an injunction to ring the
bell. It was answered by another Jew : younger than Fagin, but
nearly as vile and repulsive in appearance.

Bill Sikes merely pointed to the empty measure. The Jew, per-
fectly understanding the hint, retired to fill it : previously exchanging
A remarkable look with Fagin, who raised his eyes for an instant, as
if in expectation of it, and shook his head in reply ; so slightly that
the action would have been almost imperceptible to an observant third
person. It was lost upon Sikes, who was stooping at the moment to
tie the boot-lace which the dog had torn. Possibly, if he had observed
the brief interchange of signals, he might have thought that it boded
no good to him.

" Is anybody here, Barney ? " inquired Fagin ; speaking, now that
Sikes was lookiug on, without raising his eyes from the ground.

" Dot a shoul," replied Barney ; whose words : whether they came
from the heart or not : made their way through the nose.

" Nobody ? " inquired Fagin, in a tone of surprise : which perhaps
might mean that Barney was at liberty to tell the truth.

" Dobody but Biss Dadsy," replied Barney.

"Nancy!" exclaimed Sikes. "Where? Strike me blind, if I
don't honour that 'ere girl, for her native talents."

" She's bid havid a plate of boiled beef id the bar," rej^lied Barney.

" Send her here," said Sikes, pouring out a glass of liquor. " Send
her here."

Barney looked timidly at Fagin, as if for permission ; the Jew
remaining silent, and not lifting his eyes from the ground, he retired ;
and presently returned, ushering in Nancy ; who was decorated with
the bonnet, apron, basket, and street-door key, complete.

" You are on the scent, are you, Nancy ? " inquired Sikes, proffering
the glass.

" Yes, I am, Bill," replied the young lady, disposing of its contents ;

92 Oliver Twist.

" and tired enough of it I am, too. The young brat's been ill and
confined to the crib ; and "

" Ah, Nancy, dear ! " said Fagin, looking up.

Now, whether a peculiar contraction of the Jew's red eye-brows,
and a half-closing of his deeply-set eyes, warned Miss Nancy that she
was disposed to be too communicative, is not a matter of much
importance. The fact is all we need care for here ; and the fact is,
that she suddenly checked herself, and with several gracious smiles
upon Mr. Sikes, turned the conversation to other matters. In about
ten minutes' time, Mr. Fagin was seized with a fit of coughing ; upon
which Nancy pulled her shawl over her shoulders, and declared it
was time to go. Mr. Sikes, finding that he was walking a short part
of her way himself, expressed his intention of accompanying her;
they went away together, followed, at a little distance, by the dog,
who slunk out of a back-yard as soon as his master was out of sight.

The Jew thrust his head out of the roora door when Sikes had left
it ; looked after him as he walked up the dark passage ; shook his
clenched fist ; muttered a deep curse ; and then, with a horrible grin,
re-seated himself at the table ; where he was soon deeply absorbed in
the interesting pages of the Hue-and-Cry.

Meanwhile, Oliver Twist, little dreaming that he was within so
very short a distance of the merry old gentleman, was on his way to
the book-stall. When he got into Clerkenwell, he accidentally turned
down a by-street which was not exactly in his way ; but not discover-
ing his mistake until he had got half-way down it, and knowing it
must lead in the right direction, he did not think it worth while to
turn back; and so marched on, as quickly as he could, with the
books under his arm.

He was walking along, thinking how happy and contented he ought
to feel ; and how much he would give for only one look at poor little
Dick, who, starved and beaten, might be weeping bitterly at that very
moment ; when he was startled by a young woman screaming out
very loud, " Oh, my dear brother ! " And he had hardly looked up,
to see what the matter was, when he was stopped by having a pair of
arms thrown tight round his neck.

"Don't," cried Oliver, struggling. "Let go of me. Who is it?
What are you stopping me for ? "

The only reply to this, was a great number of loud lamentations
from the young woman who had embraced him ; and who had a little
basket and a street-door key in her hand.

" Oh my gracious ! " said the young woman, " I have found him !
Oh ! Oliver ! Oliver ! Oh you naughty boy, to make me suffer sich
distress on your account ! Come home, dear, come. Oh, I've found
him. Thank gracious goodness heavins, I've found him ! " With
these incoherent exclamations, the young woman burst into another fit
of crying, and got so dreadfully hysterical, that a couple of women
who c^me up at the moment; asked a biitcher's boy with a shiny head

"'i/U'^ (j'VtwJ^^- rul , T.^

SY!t4^€4y cm:^^???,^.'^ A<<i> a^^^^^^^c^T^^

The Hero finds d SisteK ^%

of hair anointed with suet, who was also looking on, whether he didu t
think he had better run for the doctor. To which, the butcher's boy :
who appeared of a lounging, not to say indolent disposition : replied,
that he thought not.

" Oh, no, no, never mind," said the young woman, grasping Oliver's
hand ; " I'm better now. Come home directly, you cruel boy I
Come ! "

" What's the matter, ma'am ? " inquired one of the women.

" Oh, ma'am," replied the yoimg woman, " he ran away, near a
month ago, from his parents, who are hard-working and respectable
people ; and went and joined a set of thieves and bad characters ; and
almost broke his mother's heart."

" Young wretch ! " said one woman.

" Go home, do, you little brute," said the other.

" I am not," replied Oliver, greatly alarmed. " T don't know her.
I haven't any sister, or father and mother either. I'm an orphan ; I
live at Pentonville."

" Only hear him, how he braves it out ! " cried the young woman.

" Why, it's Nancy ! " exclaimed Oliver ; who now saw her face for
the first time ; and started back, in irrepressible astonishment.

" You see he knows me ! " cried Nancy, appealing to the bystanders.
" He can't help himself. Make him come home, there's good people,
or he'll kill his dear mother and father, and break my heart ! "

" What the devil's this ? " said a man, bursting out of a beer-shop,
with a white dog at his heels ; " young Oliver ! Come home to your
poor mother, you young dog ! Come home directly."

" I don't belong to them. I don't know them.. Help ! help ! "
cried Oliver, struggling in the man's powerful grasp.

" Help ! " repeated the man. " Yes ; I'll help you, you young
rascal ! What books are these ? You've been a stealing 'em, have
you ? Give 'em here." With these words, the man tore the volumes
from his grasp, and struck him on the head.

" That's right ! " cried a looker-on, from a garret-window. " That's
the only way of bringing him to his senses ! "

" To be sure ! " cried a sleepy-faced carpenter, casting an approving
look at the garret-window.

" It'll do him good ! " said the two women.

" And he shall have it, too ! " rejoined the man, administering
another blow, and seizing Oliver by the collar. " Come on, you
young villain ! Here, Bull's-eye, mind him, boy ! Mind him ! "

Weak with recent illness ; stupefied by the blows and the sudden-
ness of the attack ; terrified by the fierce gi'owling of the dog, and the
brutality of the man ; overpowered by the conviction of the bystanders
that he really was the hardened little wretch he was described to be ;
what could one poor child do ! Darkness had set in ; it was a low
neighbourhood ; no help was near ; resistance was useless. In another
moment, he was dragged into a labyrinth of dark narrow courts, and

94 Oliver Tivist.

was forced along tliem at a pace which rendered the few cries he dared
to give ntterance to, unintelligible. It was of little moment, indeed,
whether they were intelligible or no ; for there was nobody to care
for them, had they been ever so plain.

The gas-lamps were lighted ; Mrs. Bedwin was waiting anxiously
at the open door ; the servant had run up the street twenty times
to see if there were any traces of Oliver ; and still the two old gentle-
men sat, perseveringly, in the dark parlour, with the watch between
them.

CHAPTER XVI.

RELATES WHAT BECAME OF OLIVER TWIST, AFTER HE HAD BEEN
CLAIMED BY NANCY.

The narrow streets and courts, at length, terminated in a large open
space ; scattered about which, were pens for beasts, and other
indications of a cattle-market. Sikes slackened his pace when they
reached this spot : this girl being quite unable to support any longer,
the rapid rate at which they had hitherto walked. Turning to
Oliver, he roughly commanded him to take hold of Nancy's hand.

" Do you hear ? " growled Sikes, as Oliver hesitated, and looked
round.

They were in a dark corner, quite out of the track of passengers.
Oliver saw, but too plainly, that resistance would be of no avail. He
held out his hand, which Nancy clasped tight in hers.

" Give me the other," said Sikes, seizing Oliver's unoccunied hand.
» Here, Bull's-eye ! "

The dog looked up, and growled.

" See here, boy ! " said Sikes, putting his other hand to Oliver's
throat ; " if he speaks ever so soft a word, hold him ! D'ye mind ! "

The dog growled again ; and licking his lips, eyed Oliver as if he
were anxious to attach himself to his windpipe without delay.

" He's as willing as a Christian, strike me blind if he isn't ! " said
Sikes, regarding the animal with a kind of grim and ferocious
approval. " Now, you know what you've got to expect, master, so
call away as quick as you like ; the dog will soon stop that game.
Get on, young 'un ! "

Bull's-eye wagged his tail in acknowledgment of this unusually
endearing form of speech ; and, giving vent to another admonitory
growl for the benefit of Oliver, led the way onward.

It was Smithfield that they were crossing, although it might have
been Grosvenor Square, for anything Oliver knew to the contrary.

An Unpleasant Subject. 95

The night was dark and foggy. The lights in the shops could
scarcely struggle through the heavy mist, which thickened every
moment and shrouded the streets and houses in gloom; rendering
the strange place still stranger in Oliver's eyes; and making his
uncertainty the more dismal and depressing.

They had hurried on a few paces, when a deep church-bell struck
the hour. With its fii'st stroke, his two conductors stopped, and
tui'ned their heads in the direction whence the sound proceeded.

" Eight o'clock, Bill," said Nancy, when the bell ceased.

" What's the good of telling me that ; I can hear it, can't I ! "
replied Sikes.

" I wonder whether tlieij can hear it," said Nancy.

" Of course they can," replied Sikes. " It was Bartlemy time when
I was shopped; and there warn't a penny trumpet in the fair, as
I couldn't hear the squeaking on. Arter I was locked up for the
night, the row and din outside made the thundering old jail so silent,
that I could almost have beat my brains out against the iron plates of
the door."

" Poor fellows ! " said Nancy, who still had her face turned towards
the quarter in which the bell had sounded. " Oh, Bill, such fine
young chaps as them ! "

" Yes ; that's all you women think of," answered Sikes. " Fine
young chaps ! Well, they're as good as dead, so it don't much
matter."

With this consolation, Mr. Sikes appeared to repress a rising
tendency to jealousy, and, clasping Oliver's wrist more firmly, told
him to step out again.

" Wait a minute ! " said the gii-1 : " I wouldn't hurry by, if it
was you that was coming out to be hung, the next time eight o'clock
struck. Bill. I'd walk round and round the place till I dropped,
if the snow was on the ground, and I hadn't a shawl to cover me."

" And what good would that do ? " inquired the unsentimental Mr.
Sikes. " Unless you could pitch over a file and twenty yards of good
stout rope, you might as well be walking fifty mile ofi", or not walking
at all, for all the good it would do me. Come on, and don't stand
preaching there."

The girl burst into a laugh ; drew her shawl more closely round
her ; and they walked away. But Oliver felt her hand tremble, and,
looking up in her face as they passed a gas-lamp, saw that it had
turned a deadly white.

They walked on, by little-frequented and dirty ways, for a full
half-hour : meeting very few people, and those appearing from their
looks to hold much the same position in society as Mr. Sikes himself.
At length they turned into a very filthy narrow street, nearly full of
old-clothes shops ; the dog running forward, as if conscious that there
was no further occasion for his keejjing on guard, stopped before the
door of a shop that was closed and apparently untenanted ; the house

06 Oliver Twist.

was in a ruinous condition, and on the door wfts nailed a board,
intimating that it was to let : which looked as if it had hung there for
many years.

" All right," cried Sikes, glancing cautiously about.

Nancy stooped below the shutters, and Oliver heard the sound of a
bell. They crossed to the opposite side of the street, and stood for a
few moments under a lamp. A noise, as if a sash window were gently
raised, was heard ; and soon afterwards the door softly opened. Mr.
Sikes then seized the terrified boy by the collar with very little
ceremony ; and all three were quickly inside the house.

The passage was perfectly dark. They waited, while the person
who had let them in, chained and barred the door.

" Anybody here ? " inquired Sikes.

" No," replied a voice, which Oliver thought he had heard before.

" Is the old 'un here ? " asked the robber.

" Yes," replied the voice ; " and precious down in the mouth he has
been. Won't he be glad to see you ? Oh, no ! "

The style of this reply, as well as the voice which delivered it,
seemed familiar to Oliver's ears : but it was impossible to distinguish
even the form of the speaker in the darkness.

"Let's have a glim," said Sikes, "or we shall go breaking our
necks, or treading on the dog. Look after your legs if you do ! "

" Stand still a moment, and I'll get you one," replied the voice.
The receding footsteps of the speaker wei'e heard ; and, in another
minute, the form of Mr. John Dawkins, otherwise the Artful Dodger,
appeared. He bore in his right hand a tallow candle stuck in the
end of a cleft stick.

The young gentleman did not stop to bestovt^ any other mark of
recognition upon Oliver than a humorous grin ; but, turning away,
beckoned the visitors to follow him down a flight of stairs. They
crossed an empty kitchen ; and, opening the door of a low earthy-
smelling room, which seemed to have been built in a small back-yard,
were received with a shout of laughter.

" Oh, my wig, my wig ! " cried Master Charles Bates, from whose
lungs the laughter had proceeded ; " here he is ! oh, cry, here he is !
Oh, Fagin, look at him ! Fagin, do look at him ! I can't bear it ; it
is such a jolly game, I can't bear it. Hold me, somebody, while I
laugh it out."

With this irrepressible ebullition of mirth. Master Bates laid him-
self flat on the floor : and kicked convulsively for five minutes, in an
ecstasy of facetious joy. Then jumping to his feet, he snatched the
cleft stick from the Dodger ; and, advancing to Oliver, viewed him
round and round; while the Jew, taking off his nightcap, made a
great number of low bows to the bewildered boy. The Artful, mean-
time, who was of a rather saturnine disposition, and seldom gave way
to merriment when it interfered with business, rifled Oliver's pockets
with steady assiduity.

^^^^^'^^^^A€<^<^^c^m/J^,^^^^

Restored to Pleasant Company. 07

" Look at his togs, Fagin ! " said Charley, putting the light so close
to his new jacket as nearly to set him on fire. " Look at his togs !
Superfine cloth, and the heavy swell cut ! Oh, my eye, what a game !
And his books, too ! Nothing but a gentleman, Fagin ! "

"Delighted to see you looking so well, my dear," said the Jew,
bowing with mock humility. " The Artful shall give you another
suit, my dear, for fear you should spoil that Sunday one. "Why didn't
you write, my dear, and say you were coming ? We'd have got some-
thing warm for supper."

At this, Master Bates roared again : so loud, that Fagin himself
relaxed, and even the Dodger smiled ; but as the Artful drew forth
the five-pound note at that instant, it is doubtful whether the sally
or the discovery awakened his merriment.

" Hallo, what's that ? " inquired Sikes, stepping forward as the Jew
seized the note. " That's mine, Fagin."

" No, no, my dear," said the Jew. " Mine, Bill, mine. You shall
have the books."

" If that ain't mine ! " said Bill Sikes, putting on his hat with a
determined air ; " mine and Nancy's, that is ; I'll take the boy back
again."

The Jew started. Oliver started too, though from a very different
cause ; for he hoped that the dispute might really end in his being
taken back.

" Come ! Hand over, will you ? " said Sikes.

" This is hardly fair, Bill ; hardly fair, is it, Nancy ? " inquired the
Jew.

" Fair, or not fair," retorted Sikes, " hand over, I tell you ! Do
you think Nancy and me has got nothing else to do with our precious
time but to spend it in scouting arter, and kidnapping, every young
boy as gets grabbed through you ? Give it here, you avaricious old
skeleton, give it hero ! "

With this gentle remonstrance, Mr. Sikes plucked the note from
between the Jew's finger and thumb ; and looking the old man coolly
in the face, folded it up small, and tied it in his neckerchief.

" That's for our share of the trouble," said Sikes ; " and not half
enough, neither. You may keep the books, if you're fond of reading.
If you an't, sell 'em."

" They're very pretty," said Charley Bates : who, with sundry
grimaces, had been affecting to read one of the volumes in question :
" beautiful writing, isn't it, Oliver ? " At sight of the dismayed look
with which Oliver regarded his tormentors. Master Bates, who was
blessed with a lively sense of the ludicrous, fell into another ecstasy,
more boisterous than the first.

" They belong to the old gentleman," said Oliver, wringing his
hands ; " to the good, kind, old gentleman who took me into his
house, and had me nursed, when I was near dying of the fever. Oh,
pray send them back ; send him back the books and money. Keep

98 Oliver Tivist.

me here all my life long; but pray, pray send them back. He'll
think I stole them ; the old lady : all of them who were so kind to
me : will think I stole them. Oh, do have mercy upon me, and send
them back ! "

With those words, which were uttered with all the energy of
passionate grief, Oliver fell upon his knees at the Jew's feet; and
beat his hands together, in perfect desperation.

"The boy's right," remarked Fagin, looking covertly round, and
knitting his shaggy eyebrows into a hard knot. " You're right,
Oliver, you're right ; they vsill think you have stolen 'em. Ha ! ha ! "
chuckled the Jew, nibbing his hands ; " it couldn't have happened
better, if we had chosen our time ! "

" Of course it couldn't," replied Sikes ; " I know'd that, directly I
see him coming through Clerkenwell, with the books under his arm.
It's all right enough. They're soft-hearted psalm-singers, or they
wouldn't have taken him in at all ; and they'll ask no questions after
him, fear they should be obliged to prosecute, and so get him lagged.
He's safe enough."

Oliver had looked from one to the other, while these words were
being spoken, as if he were bewildered, and could scarcely understand
what passed ; but when Bill Sikes concluded, he jumped suddenly to
his feet, and tore wildly from the room : uttering shrieks for help,
which made the bare old house echo to the roof.

" Keep back the dog. Bill I " cried Nancy, springing before the
door, and closing it, as the Jew and his two pupils darted out in
pursuit. " Keep back the dog ; he'll tear the boy to pieces."

" Serve him right ! " cried Sikes, struggling to disengage himself
from the girl's grasp. " Stand off from me, or I'll split your head
against the wall."

" I don't care for that. Bill, I don't care for that," screamed the
girl, struggling violently with the man : " the child shan't be torn
down by the dog, unless you kill me first."

" Shan't he ! " said Sikes, setting his teeth. " I'll soon do that, if
you don't keep off."

The housebreaker flung the girl from him to the further end of the
room, just as the Jew and the two boys returned, dragging Oliver
among them.

" What's the matter here ! " said Fagin, looking roimd.

" The girl's gone mad, I think," replied Sikes, savagely.

" No, she hasn't," said Nancy, pale and breathless from the scuffle ;
" no, she hasn't, Fagin ; don't think it."

" Then keep quiet, will you ? " said the Jew, with a threatening
look.

" No, I won't do that, neither," replied Nancy, speaking very loud,
" Come ! What do you think of that ? "

Mr. Fagin was sufficiently well acquainted with the manners and
customs of that particular species of humanity to which Nancy

Soul of Goodness in Things Evil, 99

belonged, to feel tolerably certain tbat it would be rather unsafe to
prolong any conversation with her, at present. With the view of
diverting the attention of the company, he turned to Oliver.

" So you wanted to get away, my dear, did you ? " said the Jew,
taking up a jagged and knotted club which lay in a comer of the
fireplace; "eh?"

Oliver made no reply. But he watched the Jew's motions, and
breathed quickly.

" Wanted to get assistance ; called for the police ; did you ? "
sneered the Jew, catching the boy by the arm. " We'll cure you of
that, my young master."

The Jew inflicted a smart blow on Oliver's shoulders with the club ;
and was raising it for a second, Avhen the girl, rushing forward,
wrested it from his hand. She flung it into the fire, with a force that
brought some of the glowing coals whirling out into the room.

" I won't stand by and see it done, Fagin," cried the girl. " You've
got the boy, and what more would you have ? — Let him be — let him
be — or I shall put that mark on some of you, that will bring me to
the gallows before my time."

The gii'l stamped her foot violently on the floor as she vented this
threat ; and with her lips compressed, and her hands clenched, looked
alternately at the Jew and the other robber : her face quite colourless
from the passion of rage into which she had gradually worked herself.

" Why, Nancy ! " said the Jew, in a soothing tone ; after a pause,
during which he and Mr. Sikes had stared at one another in a discon-
certed manner ; " you — you're more clever than ever to-night. Ha !
ha ! my dear, you are acting beautifully."

" Am I ! " said the girl. " Take care I don't overdo it. You will
be the worse for it, Fagin, if I do ; and so I tell you in good time to
keep clear of me."

There is something about a roused woman : especially if she add
to all her other strong passions, the fierce impulses of recklessness
and despair : which few men like to provoke. The Jew saw that it
would be hopeless to affect any farther mistake regarding the reality
of Miss Nancy's rage ; and, shrinking involuntarily back a few paces,
cast a glance, half imploring and half cowardly, at Sikes . as if to
hint that he was the fittest person to pui'sue the dialogue.

Mr. Sikes, thus mutely appealed to ; and possibly feeling his per-
sonal pride and influence interested in the immediate reduction of
Miss Nancy to reason ; gave utterance to about a couple of score ot
curses and threats, the rapid production of which reflected great credit
on the fertility of his invention. As they produced no visible effect
on the object against whom they were discharged, however, he resorted
to more tangible arguments.

"What do you mean by this?" said Sikes; backing the inquiry
with a very common imprecation concerning the most beautifol of
human features : which, if it were heard above, only once out of every

100 Oliver Twist.

fifty thousand times that it is uttered below, would render blindnesd
as common a disorder as measles : " what do you mean by it ? Bum
my body ! Do you know who you are, and what you are ? "

" Oh, yes, I know all about it," replied the girl, laughing hysteri-
cally ; and shaking her head from side to side, with a poor assumption
of indifference.

" Well, then, keep quiet," rejoined Sikes, with a growl like that he
was accustomed to use when addressing his dog, " or I'll quiet you for
a good long time to come."

The girl laughed again : even less composedly than before ; and,
darting a hasty look at Sikes, turned her face aside, and bit her lip
till the blood came.

" You're a nice one," added Sikes, as he surveyed her with a con-
temptuous air, " to take up the humane and gen — teel side ! A pretty
subject for the child, as you call him, to make a friend of ! "

" God Almighty help me, I am ! " cried the girl passionately ; " and
I wish I had been struck dead in the street, or had changed places
with them we passed so near to-night, before I had lent a hand in
bringing him here. He's a thief, a liar, a devil, all that's bad, from
this night forth. Isn't that enough for the old wretch, without blows ? "

" Come, come, Sikes," said the Jew, appealing to him in a remon-
stratory tone, and motioning towards the boys, who were eagerly
attentive to all that passed ; " we must have civil words ; civil words,
BiU."

" Civil words ! " cried the girl, whose passion was frightful to see.
" Civil words, you villain ! Yes, you deserve 'em from me. I thieved
for you when I was a child not half as old as this ! " pointing to
Oliver. " I have been in the same trade, and in the same service,
for twelve years since. Don't you know it ? Speak out ! Don't you
know it ? "

" Well, well," replied the Jew, with an attempt at pacification ;
" and, if you have, it's your living ! "

" Aye, it is ! " returned the girl ; not speaking, but pouring out the
words in one continuous and vehement scream. " It is my living ;
and the cold, wet, dirty streets are my home ; and you're the wretch
that drove me to them long ago, and that'll keep me there, day and
night, day and night, tUl I die ! "

'• I shall do you a mischief ! " interposed the Jew, goaded by these
reproaches ; " a mischief worse than that, if you say much more ! "

The girl said nothing more ; but, tearing her hair and dress in a
transport of passion, made such a rush at the Jew as would probably
have left signal marks of her revenge upon him, had not her wrists
been seized by Sikes at the right moment ; upon which, she made a
few ineffectual struggles, and fainted.

" She's all right now," said Sikes, laying her down in a corner.
" She's uncommon strong in the arms, when she's up in this way."

The Jew wiped his forehead : and smiled, as if it were a relief to

Fun for Charley Bates. loi

have the disturbance over ; but neither he, nor Sikes, nor the dog, nor
the boys, seemed to consider it in any other light than a common
occurrence incidental to business.

" It's the worst of having to do with women," said the Jew, replacing
his club ; " but they're clever, and we can't get on, in our line, without
'em. Charley, show Oliver to bed."

" I suppose he'd better not wear his best clothes to-morrow, Fagin,
had he ? " inquired Charley Bates.

" Certainly not," replied the Jew, reciprocating the grin with which
Charley put the question.

Master Bates, apparently much delighted with his commission, took
the cleft stick : and led Oliver into an adjacent kitchen, where there
were two or three of the beds on which he had slept before ; and here,
with many uncontrollable bursts of laughter, he produced the identical
old suit of clothes which Oliver had so much congratulated himself
upon leaving off at Mr. Brownlow's ; and the accidental display of
which, to Fagin, by the Jew who purchased them, had been the very
first clue received, of his whereabout.

" Pull off the smart ones," said Charley, " and I'll give 'em to Fagin
to take care of. What fun it is ! "

Poor Oliver unwillingly complied. Master Bates rolling up the
new clothes under his arm, departed from the room, leaving Oliver in
the dark, and locking the door behind him.

The noise of Charley's laughter, and the voice of Miss Betsy, who
opportunely arrived to throw water over her friend, and perform other
feminine offices for the promotion of her recovery, might have kept
many people awake under more happy circumstances than those in
which Oliver was placed. But he was sick and weary ; and he soon
fell sound asleep.

CHAPTEK XVII.

olfveb's destiny continuing unpropitious, bkings a great man to

LONDON to injure HIS REPUTATION.

It is the custom on the- stage, in all good murderous melodramas, to
present the tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as
the layers of red and white in a side of streaky bacon. The hero
sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes ;
in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the
audience with a comic song. We behold, with throbbing bosoms, the
heroine in the grasp of a proud and mthless baron : her virtue and
her life alike in danger, drawing forth her dagger to preserve the one
at the cost of the other ; and just as our expectations are wrought up

102 Oliver Twist

to the highest pitch, a whistle is heard, and we are straightway trans-
ported to the great hall of the castle : where a grey-headed seneschal
sings a funny chorus with a funnier body of vassals, who are free
of all sorts of places, from church vaults to palaces, and roam
about in company, carolling perpetually.

Such changes appear absurd ; but they are not so unnatural as they
would seem at first sight. The transitions in real life from well-
spread boards to death-beds, and from mourning-weeds to holiday
garments, are not a whit less startling; only, there, we are busy
actors, instead of passive lookers-on, Avhich makes a vast difference.
The actors in the mimic life of the theatre, are blind to violent transi-
tions and abrupt impulses of passion or feeling, which, presented
before the eyes of mere spectators, are at once condemned as outrageous
and preposterous.

As sudden shiftings of the scene, and rapid changes of time and
place, are not only sanctioned in books by long usage, but are by
many considered as the great art of authorship : an author's skill in
his craft being, by such critics, chiefly estimated with relation to the
dilemmas in which he leaves his characters at the end of every
chapter : this brief introduction to the present one may perhaps be
deemed unnecessary. If so, let it be considered a delicate intimation
on the part of the historian that he is going back to the town in which
Oliver Twist was born ; the reader taking it for granted that there
are good and substantial reasons for making the journey, or he would
not be invited to proceed upon such an expedition.

Mr. Bumble emerged at early morning from the workhouse-gate,
and walked with portly carriage and commanding steps, np the High
Street. He was in the full bloom and pride of beadlehood ; his
cocked hat and coat were dazzling in the morning sun ; he clutched
his cane with the vigorous tenacity of health and power. Mr. Bumble
always carried his head high ; but this morning it was higher than
usual. There was an abstraction in his eye, an elevation in his air,
which might have warned an observant stranger that thoughts were
passing in the beadle's mind, too great for utterance.

Mr. Bumble stopped not to converse with the small shopkeepers
and others who spoke to him, deferentially, as he passed along. He
merely returned their salutations with a wave of his hand, and relaxed
not in his dignified pace, until he reached the farm where Mrs. Mann
tended the infant paupers with parochial care.

" Drat that beadle ! " said Mrs. Mann, hearing the well-known
shaking at the garden-gate. " If it isn't him at this time in the
morning ! Lauk, Mr. Bumble, only think of its being you ! Well,
dear me, it is a pleasure, this is ! Come into the parlour, sir, please."

The first sentence was addressed to Susan ; and the exclamations
of delight were uttered to Mr. Bumble : as the good lady unlocked
the garden gate : and showed him, with great attention and respect,
into the house,

Bumbledom full-blown. 103

"Mrs, Mann," said Mr. Bumble; not sitting upon, or dropping
liimsolf into a scat, as any common jackanapes would : but letting
himself gradually and slowly down into a chair ; " Mrs. Mann, ma'am,
good morning."

" Well, and good morning to yott, sir," replied Mrs. Mann, with
many smiles ; " and hoping you find yourself well, sir I "

" So-so, Mrs. Mann," replied the beadle. " A porochial life is not
a bed of roses, Mrs. Mann."

" Ah, that it isn't indeed, Mr. Bumble," rejoined the lady. And
all the infant paupers might have chorussed the rejoinder with great
propriety, if tliey had heard it.

"A porochial life, ma'am," continued Mr. Bumble, striking the
table with his cane, " is a life of worrit, and vexation, and hardihood ;
but all public characters, as I may say, must sufibr prosecution."

Mrs. Mann, not very well knowing what the beadle meant, raised
her hands with a look of sympathy, and sighed.

" Ah ! You may well sigh, lilrs. Mann ! " said the beadle.

Finding she had done right, Mrs. Mann sighed again : evidently to
the satisfaction of the public character : who, repressing a complacent
smile by looking sternly at his cocked hat, said,

" Mrs. Mann, I am a going to London."

" Lank, Mr. Bumble ! " cried Mrs. Mann, starting back.

" To London, ma'am," resumed the inflexible beadle, " by coach. I
and two paupers, Mrs. Mann ! A legal action is a coming on, about
a settlement; and the board has appointed me — me, Mrs. Mann — to
depose to the matter before the quarter-sessions at Clerkinwell. And
I very much question," added Mr. Bumble, drawing himself up,
"whether the Clerkinwell Sessions will not find themselves in the
wrong box before they have done with me."

" Oh ! you mustn't be too hard upon them, sir," said Mrs. Mann,
coaxingly.

"The Clerkinwell Sessions have brought it upon themselves,
ma'am," replied Mr. Bimible ; " and if the Clerkinwell Sessions find
that they come off rather worse than they expected, the Clerkinwell
Sessions have only themselves to thank."

There was so much determination and depth of purpose about the
menacing manner in which Mr. Bumble delivered himself of these
words, that Mrs. Mann appeared quite awed by them. At length she
said,

" You're going by coach, sir ? I thought it was always usual to
send them paupers in carts."

" That's when they're ill, Mrs. Mann," said the beadle. " We put
the sick paupers into open carts in the rainy weather, to prevent their
taking cold."

" Oh ! " said Mrs. Mann.

" The opposition coach contracts for these two ; and takes them
cheap," said Mr. Bumble. " They are both in a very low staie, ana

I04 Oliver Tivist.

we find it would comG two pound cheaper to move 'em than to bury
'em — that is, if we can throw 'em upon another parish, which I think
we shall be able to do, if they don't die upon the road to spite us.
Ha! ha! ha!"

When Mr. Bumble had laughed a little while, his eyes again
encountered the cocked hat ; and he became grave.

"We are forgetting business, ma'am," said the beadle; "hero is
your porochial stipend for the month."

Mr. Bumble produced some silver money rolled up in paper, from
his pocket-book ; and requested a receipt : which Mrs. Mann wrote.

" It's very much blotted, sir," said the farmer of infants ; " but it's
formal enough, I dare say. Thank you, Mr. Bumble, sir, I am very
much obliged to you, I'm sure."

Mr. Bumble nodded, blandly, in acknowledgment of Mrs. Mann's
curtsey ; and inquired how the children were.

" Bless their dear little hearts ! " said Mrs. Mann with emotion,
" they're as well as can be, the dears ! Of course, except the two that
died last week. And little Dick."

" Isn't that boy no better ? " inquired Mr. Bumble.

Mrs. Mann shook her head.

" He's a ill-conditioned, wicious, bad-disposed porochial child that,"
said Mr. Bumble angrily. " Where is he ? "

" I'll bring him to you in one minute, sir," replied Mrs. Mann.
" Here, you Dick ! "

After some calling, Dick was discovered. Having had his face put
under the pump, and dried upon Mrs. Mann's gown, ho was led into
the awful presence of Mr. Bumble, the beadle.

The child was pale and thin ; his cheeks were sunken ; and his
eyes large and bright. The scanty parish dress, the livery of his
misery, hung loosely on his feeble body ; and his young limbs had
wasted away, like those of an old man.

Such was the little being who stood trembling beneath Mr. Bumble's
glance ; not daring to lift his eyes from the floor ; and dreading even
to hear the beadle's voice.

" Can't you look at the gentleman, you obstinate boy ? " said Mrs.
Mann.

The child meekly raised his eyes, and encountered those of Mr.
Bumble.

" What's the matter with you, porochial Dick ? " inquired Mr.
Bumble, with well-timed jocularity.

" Nothing, sir," replied the child faintly.

" I should think not," said Mrs. Mann, who had of course laughed
very much at Mr. Bumble's humour. " You want for nothing, I'm
sure."

" I should like " faltered the child.

" Heyday ! " interposed Mrs. Mann, " I suppose you're going to say
that you do want for something, now ? Why, you little wretch ^ "

A very Bad Boy indeed. 105

" Stop, Mrs. Mann, stop ! " said the beadlo, raising his hand with a
show of authority. " Like what, sir, eh ? "

" I should like," faltered the child, " if somebody that can write,
would put a few words down for me on a piece of paper, and fold it
up and seal it, and keep it for me, after I am laid in the ground."

" Why, what does the boy mean ? " exclaimed Mr. Bumble, on
whom the earnest manner and wan aspect of the child had made some
impression : accustomed as he was to such things. " What do you
mean, sir ? "

" I should like," said the child, " to leave my dear love to poor
Oliver Twist ; and to let him know how often I have sat by myself
and cried to think of his wandering about in the dark nights with
nobody to help him. And I should like to tell him," said the child,
pressing his small hands together, and speaking with great fervour,
" that I was glad to die when I was very young ; for, perhaps, if I
had lived to be a man, and had grown old, my little sister who is in
Heaven, might forget me, or be unlike me ; and it would bo so much
happier if we were both children there together."

Mr. Bumble surveyed the little speaker, from head to foot, with
indescribable astonishment; and, turning to his companion, said,
" They're all in one story, Mrs. Mann. That out-dticious Oliver has
demogalized them all ! "

" I couldn't have believed it, sir ! " said Mrs. Mann, holding up
her hands, and looking malignantly at Dick. " I never see such a
hardened little wretch 1 "

" Take him away, ma'am ! " said Mr. Bumble imperiously. " This
must be stated to the board, Mrs. Mann."

" I hope the gentlemen will understand that it isn't my fault, sir ? "
said Mrs. Mann, whimpering pathetically.

" They shall understand that, ma'am ; they shall be acquainted
with the true state of the case," said Mr. Bumble. " There ; take
him away, I can't bear the sight on him."

Dick was immediately taken away, and locked up in the coal-cellar.
Mr. Bumble shortly afterwards took himself off, to prepare for his
journey.

At six o'clock next morning, Mr. Bumble : having exchanged his
cocked hat for a round one, and encased his person in a blue great-
coat with a cape to it: took his place on the outside of the coach,
accompanied by the criminals whose settlement was disputed ; with
whom, in due course of time, he arrived in London. He experienced
no other crosses on the way, than those which originated in the
perverse behaviour of the two paupers, who persisted in shivering,
and complaining of the cold, in a manner which, Mr. Bumble declared,
caused his teeth to chatter in his head, and made him feel quite
uncomfortable ; although he had a great-coat on.

Having disposed of these evil-minded persons for the night, Mr.
Bumble sat himself down in the house at which the coach stopped ;

io6 Oliver Twist.

and took a temperate dinner of steaks, oyster sauce, and porter.
Putting a glass of Lot gin-and-water on the ehinmey-pieco, he drew
his chair to the fire ; and, with sundry moral reflections on the too-
prevalent sin of discontent and complaining, composed himself to
read the paper.

The very first paragraph upon which Mr. Bumble's eye rested, was
the following advertisement.

" FIVE GUINEAS REWAED.

"Whereas a young boy, named Oliver Twist, absconded, or was
enticed, on Thursday evening last, from his home, at Pentonville;
and has not since been heard of. The above reward will be paid to
any person who will give such information as will lead to the dis-
covery of the said Oliver Twist, or tend to throw any light upon his
previous history, in which the advertiser is, for many reasons, warmly
interested."

And then followed a full description of Oliver's dress, person,
appearance, and disappearance: with the name and address of Mr.
Brownlow at full length.

Mr. Bumble opened his eyes ; read the advertisement, slowly and
carefully, three several times ; and in something more than five
minutes was on his way to Pentonville : having actually, in his
excitement, left the glass of hot gin-and-water, untasted.

"Is Mr. Brownlow at home?" inquired Mr. Bumble of the girl
who opened the door.

To this inquiry the girl returned the not uncommon, but rather
evasive reply of " I don't know ; where do you come from ? "

Mr. Bumble no sooner nttered Oliver's name, in explanation of his
errand, than Mrs. Bedwin, who had been listening at the parlour door,
hastened into the passage in a breathless state.

" Come in, come in," said the old lady : " I knew we should hear
of him. Poor dear ! I knew we should ! I was certain of it. Bless
his heart ! I said so, all along."

Having said this, the worthy old lady hurried back into the parlour
again ; and seating herself on a sofa, burst into tears. The girl, who
was not quite so susceptible, had run up-stairs meanwhile ; and now
returned with a request that Mr. Bumble would follow her imme-
diately : which he did.

He was shown into the little back study, where sat Mr. Brownlow
and his friend Mr. Grim\vig, with decanters and glasses before them.
The latter gentleman at once burst into the exclamation :

" A beadle ! A parish beadle, or I'll eat my head."

" Pray don't interrupt just now," said Mr. Brownlow. " Take a
seat, will you ? "

Mr. Bumble sat himself down ; quite confounded by the oddity of
Mr. Grimwig's manner. Mr. Brownlow moved the lamp, so as to

Five Guineas for Buvible. 107

obtain an uninterrupted view of the Beadle's countenance ; and said,
^^^th a little impatience,

" Now, sir, you come in consequence of having seen the advertise-
ment ? "

" Yes, sir," said Mr. Bumble.

" And you are a beadle, are you not ? " inquired Mr. Grimwig.

"I am a porochial beadle, gentlemen," rejoined Mr. Bumble,
proudly.

" Of course," observed Mr. Grimwig aside to his friend, " I knew
ho was. A beadle all over ! "

Mr. Brownlow gently shook his head to impose silence on his friend,
and resumed :

" Do you know where this poor boy is now ? "

" No more than nobody," replied Mr. Bumble.

" Well, what do you know of him ? " inquired the old gentleman.
" Speak out, my friend, if you have anything to say. What do you
know of him ? "

" You don't happen to know any good of him, do you ? " said Mr.
Grimwig, caustically ; after an attentive perusal of Mr. Bumble's
features.

Mr. Bumble, catching at the inquiry very quickly, shook his head
with portentous solemnity.

"You see?" said Mr. Grimwig, looking triumphantly at Mr.
Brownlow.

Mr. Brownlow looked apprehensively at Mr. Bumble's pursed-up
countenance; and requested him to communicate what he knew
regarding Oliver, in as few words as possible.

Mr. Bumble put down his hat ; unbuttoned his coat ; folded his
arms ; inclined his head in a retrospective manner ; and, after a few
moments' reflection, commenced his story.

It would be tedious if given in the beadle's words : occupying, as
it did, some twenty minutes in the telling ; but the sum and substance
of it was, That Oliver was a foundling, born of low and vicious
parents. That he had, from his birth, displayed no better qualities
than treachery, ingratitude, and malice. That he had terminated his
brief career in the place of his bii'th, by making a sanguinary and
cowardly attack on an unoffending lad, and. running away in the
night-time from his master's house. In proof of his really being the
person he represented himself, Mr. Bumble laid upon the table the
papers he had brought to town. Folding his arms again, he then
awaited Mr. Brownlow's observations.

"I fear it is all too true," said the old gentleman sorrowfully,
after looking over the papers. " This is not much for your intelli-
gence ; but I would gladly have given you treble the money, if it
had been favourable to the boy."

It is not improbable that if Mr. Bumble had been possessed of this
information at an earlier period of the interview, he might have

io8 Oliver Twist.

imparted a very different colouring to his little history. It was too
late to do it now, how^ever ; so he shook his head gravely, and, pocket-
ing the five guineas, withdrew.

Mr. Brownlow paced the room to and fro for some minutes;
evidently so much disturbed by the beadle's tale, that even Mr.
Grimwig forbore to vex him further.

At length he stopped, and rang the bell violently.

" Mrs. Bed win," said Mr. Brownlow, when the housekeeper appeared ;
♦' that boy, Oliver, is an impostor."

" It can't be, sir. It cannot be," said the old lady energetically.

" I tell you he is," retorted the old gentleman. *' What do you
mean by can't be ? We have just heard a full account of him from
his birth; and he has been a thorough-paced little villain, all his
life."

" I never will believe it, sir," replied the old lady, firmly. " Never ! "

" You old women never believe anything but quack-doctors, and
lying story-books," growled Mr. Grimwig. "I knew it all along.
Why didn't you take my advice in the beginning ; you would if he
hadn't had a fever, I suppose, eh ? He was interesting, wasn't he ?
Interesting ! Bah ! " And Mr. Grimwig poked the fire with a
flourish.

" He was a dear, grateful, gentle child, sir," retorted Mrs. Bedwin,
indignantly. " I know what children are, sir ; and have done these
forty years ; and people who can't say the same, shouldn't say any-
thing about them. That's my opinion ! "

This was a hard hit at Mr. Grimwig, who was a bachelor. As it
extorted nothing from that gentleman but a smile, the old lady tossed
her head, and smoothed down her apron preparatory to another speech,
when she was stopped by Mr. Brownlow.

" Silence ! " said the old gentleman, feigning an anger he was far
from feeling. " Never let me hear the boy's name again. I rang to
tell you that. Never. Never, on any pretence, mind! You may
leave the room, Mrs. Bedwin. Remember ! I am in earnest."

There were sad hearts at Mr. Brownlow's that night.

Oliver's heart sank within him, when he thought of his good kind
friends ; it was well for him that he could not know what they had
heard, or it might have broken outright.

CHAPTER XVlII.

BOW 6LIVKR PASSED HIS HME IN THE lUPBOYINO SOCISTT OF filS
REPUTABLE FRIENDS.

About noon next day, when the Dodger and Master Bates had gone
out to pursue their customary avocations, Mr. Fagin took the oppor-
tunity of reading Oliver a long lecture on the crying sin of ingratitude ;
of which he clearly demonstrated he had been guilty, to no ordinary
extent, in wilfully absenting himself from the society of his anxious
friends ; and, still more, in endeavouring to escape from them after
so much trouble and expense had been incurred in his recovery. Mr.
Fagin laid great stress on the fact of his having taken Oliver in, and
cherished him, when, without his timely aid, he might have perished
with hunger ; and he related the dismal and affecting history of a
young lad whom, in his philanthropy, he had succoured under parallel
circumstances, but who, proving unworthy of his confidence and
evincing a desire to communicate with the police, had unfortunately
come to be hanged at the Old Bailey one morning. Mr. Fagin did
not seek to conceal his share in the catastrophe, but lamented with
tears in his eyes that the wrong-headed and treacherous behaviour of
the young person in question, had rendered it necessary that he should
become the victim of certain evidence for the crown : which, if it were
not precisely true, was indispensably necessary for the safety of him
(Mr. Fagin) and a few select friends. Mr. Fagin concluded by
drawing a rather disagreeable picture of the discomforts of hanging ;
and, with great friendliness and politeness of manner, expressed his
anxious hopes that he might never be obliged to submit Oliver Twist
to that unpleasant operation.

Little Oliver's blood ran cold, as he listened to the Jew's words,
and imperfectly comprehended the dark threats conveyed in them.
That it was possible even for justice itself to confound the innocent
with the guilty when the)' were in accidental companionship, he knew
already; and that deeply-laid plans for the destruction of incon-
veniently knowing or over-communicative persons, had been really
devised and carried out by the old Jew on more occasions than one,
he thought by no means unlikely, when he recollected the general
nature of the altercations between that gentleman and Mr. Sikes:
which seemed to bear reference to some foregone conspiracy of the
kind. As he glanced timidly up, and met the Jew's searching look,
he felt that his pale face and trembling limbs were neither unnoticed
nor unrelished by that wary old gentleman.

The Jew, smiling hideously, patted Oliver on the head, and said,
that if he kept himself quiet, and applied himself to business, he saw
they would be very good friends yet. Then, taking his hat, and

no Oliver Twist.

covering himself with an old patched great-coat, he went out, and
locked the room-door behind him.

And so Oliver remained all that day, and for the greater part of
many subsequent days, seeing nobody, between early morning and
midnight, and left during the long hours to commune with his own
thoughts. Which, never failing to revert to his kind friends, and the
opinion they must long ago have formed of him, were sad indeed.

After the lapse of a week or so, the Jew left the room-door un-
locked ; and he was at liberty to wander about the house.

It was a very dirty place. The rooms up-stairs had groat high
wooden chimney-pieces and large doors, with panelled walls and
cornices to the ceiling ; which, although they were black with neglect
and dust, were ornamented in various ways. From all of these tokens
Oliver concluded that a long time ago, before the old Jew was born,
it had belonged to better people, and had perhaps been quite gay and
handsome : dismal and dreary as it looked now.

Spiders had built their webs in the angles of the walls and ceilings ;
and sometimes, when Oliver walked softly into a room, the mice would
scamper across the floor, and run back terrified to their holes. With
these exceptions, there was neither sight nor sound of any living
thing ; and often, when it grew dark, and he was tired of wandering
from room to room, he would crouch in the corner of the passage by
the street-door, to be as near living people as he could ; and would
remain there, listening and counting the hours, until the Jew or the
boys returned

In all the rooms, the mouldering shutters were fast closed : the bars
■which held them were screwed tight into the wood ; the only light
which was admitted, stealing itft way through round holes at the top :
which made the rooms more ^>loomy, and filled t^iem with strange
shadov/s. There was a back-garret window with rusty bars outside,
which had no shutter ; and out of this, Oliver often gazed with a
melancholy face for hours together ; but nothing was to be descried
from it but a confused and crowded mass of house-tops, blackened
chimneys, and gable-ends. Sometimes, indeed, a grizzly head might
be seen, peering over the parapet-wall of a distant house : but it was
quickly withdrawn again ; and as the window of Oliver's observatory
was nailed down, and dimmed with the rain and smoke of years, it
was as much as he could do to make out the forms of the different
objects beyond, without making any attempt to be seen or heard, —
which he had as much chance of being, as if he had lived inside the
ball of St. Paul's Cathedral.

One afternoon, the Dodger and Master Bates being engaged out
that evening, the first-named young gentleman took it into his head to
evince some anxiety regarding the decoration of his person (to do him
justice, this was by no means an habitual weakness with him) ; and,
with this end and aim, he condescendingly commanded Oliver to
assist him in his toilet, (straightway.

Ah Out-and-Out Christian. ill

Oliver was but too glad to make hiiiiBelf useful ; too Lappy to have
Bome faces, however bad, to look upon ; too desirous to conciliate
those about him when he could honestly do so ; to throw any objec-
tion in the way of this proposal. So he at once expressed his readi-
ness ; and, kneeling on the floor, while the Dodger sat upon the table
80 that he could toke his foot in his lap, he applied himself to a
process which Mr. Dawkins designated as "japanning his trotter-
cases." The phrase, rendered into plain English, signifieth, cleaning
his boots.

Whether it was the sense of freedom and independence which a
rational animal may be supposed to feel when he sits on a table in an
easy attitude smoking a pipe, swinging one leg carelessly to and fro,
and having his boots cleaned all the time, without even the past
trouble of having taken them off, or the prospective misery of putting
them on, to disturb his reflections ; or whether it was the goodness of
the tobacco that soothed the feelings of the Dodger, or the mildness
of the beer that mollified his thoughts ; he was evidently tinctured,
for the nonce, with a spice of romance and enthusiasm, foreign to his
gonei-al nature. He looked down on Oliver, with a thoughtful coimte-
nance, for a brief space ; and then, raising his head, and heaving a
gentle sigh, said, half in abstraction, and half to Master Bates :

" "What a pity it is he isn't a prig ! "

" Ah ! " said Master Charles Bates ; " he don't know what's good
for him."

The Dodger sighed again, and resumed his pipe : as did Charley
Bates. They both smoked, for some seconds, in silence.

" I suppose you don't even know what a prig is ? " said the Dodger
mournfully.

" I think I know that," replied Oliver, looking up. " It's a th — ;
you're one, are you not ? " inquired Oliver, checking himself.

" I am," replied the Dodger. " I'd scorn to be anything else."
Mr, Dawkins gave his hat a ferocious cock, after delivering this senti-
ment, and looked at Master Bates, as if to denote that he would feel
obliged by his saying anything to the contrary.

" I am," repeated the Dodger. " So's Charley. So's Fagin. So's
Sikes. So's Nancy. So's Bet. So we all are, down to the dog. And
he's the downiest one of the lot ! "

" And the least given to peaching," added Charley Bates.

" He wouldn't so much as bark in a witness-box, for fear of com-
mitting himself; no, not if you tied him up in one, and left him there
without wittles for a fortnight," said the Dodger.

« Not a bit of it," observed Charley.

♦' He's a rum dog. Don't he look fierce at any strange cove that
laughs or sings when he's in company ! " pursued the Dodger.
" Won't he growl at all, when he hears a fiddle playing ! And don't
he hate other dogs as ain't of his breed ! Oh, no ! "

" He's an out-and-out Christian," said Charley.

112 Oliver Twist

This was merely intended as a tribute to the animal's abilities, but
it was an appropriate remark in another sense, if Master Bates had
only known it ; for there are a good many ladies and gentlemen,
claiming to be out-and-out Christians, between whom, and Mr. Sikes'
dog, there exist strong and singular points of resemblance.

" Well, well," said the Dodger, recurring to the point from which
they had strayed : with that mindfulness of his profession which
influenced all his proceedings. " This hasn't got anything to do with
young Green here."

" No more it has," said Charley. " Why don't you put yourself
under Fagin, Oliver ? "

" And make your fortun' out of hand ? " added the Dodger, with a
grin.

" And so be able to retire on your property, and do the gen-teel : as
I mean to, in the very next leap-year but four that ever comes, and
the forty-second Tuesday in Trinity-week," said Charley Bates.

" I don't like it," rejoined Oliver, timidly ; " I wish they would let
me go. I — I — would rather go."

" And Fagin would rather not ! " rejoined Charley.

Oliver knew this too well ; but thinking it might be dangerous to
express his feelings more openly, he only sighed, and went on with his
boot-cleaning.

*' Go ! " exclaimed the Dodger. " Why, where's your spirit ? Don't
you take any pride out of yourself ? Would you go and be dependent
on your friends ? "

" Oh, blow that ! " said Master Bates : drawing two or three silk
handkerchiefs from his pocket, and tossing them into a cupboard,
" that's too mean ; that is."

" I couldn't do it," said the Dodger, with an air of haughty disgust.

" You can leave your friends, though," said Oliver with a half smile ;
" and let them be punished for what you did."

" That," rejoined the Dodger, with a wave of his pipe, " That was
all out of consideration for Fagin, 'cause the traps know that we work
together, and he might have got into trouble if we hadn't made our
lucky; that was the move, wasn't it, Charley?"

Master Bates nodded assent, and would have spoken ; but the recol-
lection of Oliver's flight camo so suddenly upon him, that the smoke
he was inhaling got entangled with a laugh, and went up into his head,
and dov^Ti into his throat : and brought on a fit of coughing and
stamping, about five minutes long.

" Look here ! " said the Dodger, drawing forth a handful of shillings
and halfpence. " Here's a jolly life ! What's the odds where it
comes from ? Here, catch hold ; there's plenty more where they were
took from. You won't, won't you ? Oh, you precious flat ! "

" It's naughty, ain't it, Oliver ? " inquired Charley Bates. " He'll
come to be scragged, won't he ? "

*' I don't know what that means," replied Oliver,

a^^^z^^^z!Sa-^ sa^i/a^^ ayA^^?f^^^i:^{?'>z^z/:^^A/i.^

Improving Advice. 113

" Something in this way, old feller," said Charley. As lie said it,
Master Bates caught up an end of his neckerchief; and, holding it
erect in the air, dropped his head on his shoulder, and jerked a curious
Bound through his teeth ; thereby indicating, by a lively pantomimic
representation, that scragging and hanging were one and the same
thing.

" That's what it means," said Charley. " Look how he stares, Jack !
I never did see such prime company as that 'ere boy ; he'll be the
death of me, I know he will." Master Charles Bates, having laughed
heartily again, resumed his pipe with tears in his eyes.

"You've been brought up bad," said the Dodger, surveying his
boots with much satisfaction when Oliver had polished them. " Fagin
will make something of you, though, or you'll be the first he ever had
that turned out unprofitable. You'd better begin at once ; for you'll
come to the trade long before yon think of it ; and you're only losing
time, Oliver."

Master Bates backed this advice with sundry moral admonitions of his
own : which, being exhausted, ho and his friend Mr. Dawkins launched
into a glowing description of the numerous pleasures incidental to the
life they led, interspersed with a variety of hints to Oliver that the
best thing he could do, would be to secure Fagin's favour without more
delay, by the means which they themselves had employed to gain it.

" And always put this in your pipe, Nolly," said the Dodger, as the
Jew was heard unlocking the door above, " if you don't take fogies and
tickers "

"What's the good of talking in that way?" interposed Master
Bates : " he don't know what you mean."

" If you don't take pocket-handkechers and watches," said the
Dodger, reducing his conversation to the level of Oliver's capacity,
" some other cove will ; so that the coves that lose 'em will be all the
worse, and you'll be all the worse too, and nobody half a ha'p'orth the
better, except the chaps wot gets them — and you've just as good a
right to them as they have."

" To be sure, to be sure ! " said the Jew, who had entered, unseen by
Oliver. " It all lies in a nutshell, my dear ; in a nutshell, take the
Dodger's word for it. Ha ! ha ! ha ! He understands the catechism
of his trade."

The old man rubbed his hands gleefully together, as he corroborated
the Dodger's reasoning in these terms ; and chuckled with delight at
his pupil's proficiency.

The conversation proceeded no farther at this time, for the Jew had
returned home accompanied by Miss Betsy, and a gentleman whom
Oliver had never seen before, but who was accosted by the Dodger as
Tom Chitling ; and who, having lingered on the stairs to exchange a
few gallantries with the lady, now made his appearance.

Mr. Chitling was older in years than the Dodger : having perhaps
numbered eighteen winters ; but there was a degree of deference in

I

114 Oliver Twist.

his deportment towards that young gentleman which seemed to indicate
that he felt himself conscious of a slight inferiority in point of genius
and professional acquirements. He had small twinkling eyes, and a
pock-marked face; wore a fur cap, a dark corduroy jacket, greasy
fustian trousers, and an apron. His wardi-obe was, in truth, rather out
of repair ; but he excused himself to the company by stating that his
" time " was only out an hour before ; and that, in consequence of
having worn the regimentals for six weeks past, he had not been ablo
to bestow any attention on his private clothes. Mr. Chitliug added,
with strong marks of irritation, that the new way of fumigating clothes
up yonder was infernal unconstitutional, for it burnt holes in them,
and there was no remedy against the County. The same remark he
considered to apply to the regulation mode of cutting the hair : which
he held to be decidedly unla^yful. Mr. Chitling wound up his observa-
tions by stating that he had not touched a drop of anything for forty-
two moral long hard-working days ; and that he " wished he might be
busted if he warn't as dry as a lime-basket."

"Where do you think the gentleman has come from, Oliver?"
inquired the Jew, with a grin, as the other boys put a bottle of spirits
on the table.

" I — I— don't know, sir," replied Oliver.

" Who's that ? " inquired Tom Chitling, casting a contemptnous look
at Oliver.

" A young friend of mine, my dear," replied the Jew.
" He's in luck, then," said the young man, with a meaning look at
Fagin. " Never mind where I came from, young 'un ; you'll find your
way there, soon enough, I'll bet a crown ! "

At this sally, the boys laughed. After some more jokes on the same
subject, they exchanged a few short whispers with Fagin ; and with-
drew.-

After some words apart between the last comer and Fagin, they drew
their chairs towards the fire ; and the Jew, telling Oliver to come and
sit by him, led the conversation to the topics most calculated to
interest his hearers. These were, the great advantages of the trade,
the proficiency of the Dodger, the amiability of Charley Bates, and the
liberality of the Jew himself. At length these subjects displayed
signs of being thoroughly exhausted ; and Mr. Chitling did the same :
for the house of correction becomes fatiguing after a week or two.
Miss Betsy accordingly withdrew ; and left the party to their repose.

From this day, Oliver was seldom left alone; but was placed in
almost constant communication with the two boys, who played the
old game with the Jew every day : whether for their own improvement
or Oliver's, Mr. Fagin best knew. At other times the old man would
tell them stories of robberies he had committed in his younger days :
mixed up with so much that was droll and curious, that Oliver could
not help laughing heartily, and showing that he was amused in spit^
of all his better feelings.

Business afoot. 115

In short, the wily old Jew had the boy in his toils. Having pre-
pared his mind, by solitude and gloom, to prefer any society to the
companionship of his own sad thoughts in such a dreary place, he was
now slowly instilling into his soul the poison which he hoped would
blacken it, and change its hue for ever.

CHAPTER XIX. '

IN WmOH A NOTABLE PLAN IS DISCUSSED AND DETERMINED ON,

It was a chill, damp, windy night, when the Jew; buttoning his
great-coat tight round his shrivelled body, and pulling the collar up
over his cai-s so as completely to obscure the lower part of his face :
emerged from his den. He paused on the step as the door was locked
and chained behind him ; and having listened while the boys made all
secure, and until their retreating footsteps were no longer audible,
slunk down the street as quickly as he could.

The house to which Oliver had been conveyed, was in the neigh-
bourhood of Whitechapel. The Jew stopped for an instant at the
corner of the street; and, glancing suspiciously round, crossed the
road, and struck off in the direction of Spitalfields.

The mud lay thick upon the stones, and a black mist hung over the
streets ; the rain fell sluggishly down, and everything felt cold and
clammy to the touch. It seemed just the night when it befitted such
a being as the Jew to be abroad. As he glided stealthily along,
creeping beneath the shelter of the walls and doorways, the hideous
old man seemed like some loathsome reptile, engendered in the slime
and darkness through which he moved : crawling forth, by night, in
search of some rich offal for a meal.

He kept on his course, through many winding and narrow ways,
until he reached Bethnal Green ; then, turning suddenly off to the left,
he soon became involved in a maze of the mean and dirty streets
which abound in that close and densely-populated quarter.

The Jew was evidently too familiar with the ground he traversed
to be at all bewildered, either by the darkness of the night, or the
intricacies of the way. He hurried through several alleys and streets,
and at length turned into one, lighted only by a single lamp at the
farther end. At the door of a house in this street, he knocked ; having
exchanged a few muttered words with the person who opened it, he
walked up-stairs.

A dog growled as he touched the handle of a room-door ; and a
inan's voice demanded who was there.

" Only me, Bill ; onl^ me, my dear," said the Jew, looking in.

ii5 Oliver Twist.

" Bring in your body then," said Sikos. " Lie down, you stupid
brute ! Don't you know the devil when he's got a great-coat on ? "

Apparently, the dog had been somewhat deceived by Mr. Fagin's
outer garment; for as the Jew unbuttoned it, and threw it over the
back of a chair, he retired to the corner from which he had risen :
wagginf' his tail as he went, to show that he was as well satisfied as
it was in his nature to be.

" Well ! " said Sikes.

" Well, my dear," replied the Jew. — "Ah ! Nancy."

The latter recognition was uttered with just enough of embarrassment
to imply a doubt of its reception ; for Mr. Fagin and his young friend
had not met, since she had interfered in behalf of Oliver. All doubts
upon the subject, if he had any, were speedily removed by the young
lady's behaviour. She took her feet off the fender, pushed back her
chair, and bade Fagin draw up his, without saying more about it : for
it was a cold night, and no mistake.

" It is cold, Nancy dear," said the Jew, as he warmed his skinny hands
over the fire. " It seems to go idght through one," added the old man,
touching his side.

"It must be a piercer, if it finds its way through your heart," said
Mr. Sikes. " Give him something to drink, Nancy. Burn my body,
make haste ! It's enough to turn a man ill, to see his lean old car-
case shivering in that way, like a ugly ghost just rose from the grave."

Nancy quickly brought a bottle from a cupboard, in which there
■were many : which, to judge from the diversity of their appearance,
were filled with several kinds of liquids, Sikes pouring out a glass
of brandy, bade the Jew drink it off.

" Quite enough, quite, thankye. Bill," replied the Jew, putting down
the glass after just setting his lips to it.

" What ! You're afraid of our getting the better of you, are you ? "
inquired Sikes, fixing his eyes on the Jew. " Ugh ! "

With a hoarse grunt of contempt, Mr. Sikes seized the glass, and
threw the remainder of its contents into the ashes : as a preparatory
ceremony to filling it again for himself: which he did at once.

The Jew glanced round the room, as his companion tossed down
the second glassful ; not in curiosity, for he had seen it often before ;
but in a restless and suspicious manner habitual to him. It was a
meanly furnished apartment, with nothing but the contents of the
closet to induce the belief that its occupier was anything but a work-
ing man ; and with no more suspicious articles displayed to view than
two or three heavy bludgeons which stood in a corner, and a " life-
preserver " that hung over the chimney-piece,

" There," said Sikes, smacking his lips. " Now I'm ready."

" For business ? " inquired the Jew,

" For business," replied Sikes ; " so say what you've got to say,"

"About the crib at Chertsey, Bill?" said the Jew, drawing his
chair forward, apd speaking in a very low voice.

The Business discussed. ti7

'' Yes. Wot about it," inquired Sikes.

" All ! you know what I mean, my dear," said the Jew. " He knows
Mrhat I mean, Nancy ; don't he ? "

" No, he don't," sneered Mr. Sikes. " Or he won't, and that's the
same thing. Speak out, and call things by their right names ; don't
sit there, winking and blinking, and talking to me in hints, as if you
wam't the very first that thought about the robbery. "Wot d'ye
mean ? "

" Hush, Bill, hush ! " said the Jew, who had in vain attempted to
stop this burst of indignation; "somebody will hear us, my dear.
Somebody will heai' us."

" Let 'em hear ! " said Sikes ; " I don't care." But as Mr. Sikes
Aid care, on reflection, he dropped his voice as he said the words, and
grew calmer.

" There, there," said the Jew, coaxingly. " It was only my caution,
nothing more. Now, my dear, about that crib at Chertsey ; when is
it to be done. Bill, eh ? When is it to be done ? Such plate, my
dear, such plate ! " said the Jew : rubbing his hands, and elevating
liis eyebrows in a rapture of anticipation.

" Not at all," replied Sikes coldly.

" Not to be done at all ! " echoed the Jew, leaning back in his chair.

" No, not at all," rejoined Sikes. " At least it can't be a put-up
job, as we expected."

" Then it hasn't been properly gone about," said the Jew, turning
pale with anger. " Don't tell me ! "

" But I will tell you," retorted Sikes. " Who are you that's not
to be told ? I tell you that Toby Crackit has been hanging about the
place for a fortnight, and he can't get one of the servants into a line."

" Do you mean to tell me. Bill," said the Jew : softening as tho
other gi-ew heated : " that neither of the two men in the house can be
got over ? "

" Yes, I do mean to tell you so," replied Sikes. " The old lady
has had 'em these twenty year; and if you were to give 'em fivo
hundred pound, they wouldn't be in it."

" But do you mean to say, my dear," remonstrated the Jew, " that
the women can't be got over ? "

" Not a bit of it," replied Sikes.

" Not by flash Toby Crackit ? " said the Jew incredulously. " Think
what women are, Bill."

" No ; not even by flash Toby Crackit," replied Sikes. " He says
he's worn sham whiskers, and a canary waistcoat, the whole blessed
time he's been loitering down there, and it's all of no use."

" He should have tried mustachios and a pair of military trousers,
my dear," said the Jew.

" So he did," rejoined Sikes, " and they wam't of no more use than
the other plant."

The Jew looked blank at this information! After ruminating for

Ii8 Oliver Tavist.

Bome minutes with Lis chin sunk on his breast, he raised his head
and said, with a deep sigh, that if flash Toby Crackit reported aright,
ho feared the game was up.

"And yet," said the old man, dropping his hands on his knees,
" it's a sad thing, my dear, to lose so much when we had set our hearts
upon it."

« So it is," said Mr. Sikes. " Worse luck ! "

A long silence ensued ; during which the Jew was plunged in deep
thought, with his face wrinkled into an expression of villainy per-
fectly demoniacal. Sikes eyed him furtively from time to time.
Nancy, apparently fearful of irritating the housebreaker, sat with her
eyes fixed upon the fire, as if she had been deaf to all that passed.

" Fagin," said Sikes, abruptly breaking the stillness that prevailed ;
" is it worth fifty shiners extra, if it's safely done from the outside ? "

" Yes," said the Jew, as suddenly rousing himself.

" Is it a bargain ? " inquired Sikes.

" Yes, my dear, yes," rejoined the Jew ; his eyes glistening, and
every muscle in his face working, with the excitement that the inquiry
had awakened.

"Then," said Sikes, thrusting aside the Jew's hand, with some
disdain, " let it come off as soon as you like. Toby and me were over
the garden-wall the night afore last, sounding the panels of the door
and shutters. The crib's barred up at night like a jail ; but there's
one part we can crack, safe and softly."

" Which is that. Bill ? " asked the Jew eagerly.

" Why," whispered Sikes, " as you cross the lawn "

" Yes ? " said the Jew, bending his head forward, with his eyes
almost starting out of it.

" Umph ! " cried Sikes, stopping short, as the girl, scarcely moving
her head, looked suddenly round, and pointed for an instant to *the
Jew's face. " Never mind which part it is. You can't do it without
me, I know ; but it's best to be on the safe side when one deals with
you."

" As you like, my dear, as you like," replied the Jew. " Is there
no help wanted, but yours and Toby's ? "

"None," said Sikes. "'Copt a centre-bit and a boy. The first
we've both got ; the second you must find us."

" A boy ! " exclaimed the Jew. " Oh ! then it's a panel, eh ? "

" Never mind wot it is ! " replied Sikes. " I want a boy, and he
mustn't be a big un. Lord ! " said Mr. Sikes, reflectively, " if I'd
only got that young boy of Ned, the chimbley-sweeper's ! He kept
him small on purpose, and let him out by the job. But the father
gets lagged ; and then the Juvenile Delinquent Society comes, and
takes the boy away from a trade where he was arning money, teaches
him to read and write, and in time makes a 'prentice of him. And so
they go on," said Mr. Sikes, his wrath rising with the recollection of
his wrongs, " so they go on ; and, if they'd got money enough (which

The very Boy for the Purpose. 1 19

it's a Providence they haven't,) we shouldn't have half-a-dozen boys
loft in the whole trade, in a year or two."

" No more we should," acquiesced the Jew, who had been considering
during this speech, and had only caught the last sentence. " Bill ! "

" "What now ? " inquired Sikes.

The Jew nodded his head towards Nancy, who was still gazing at
the fire ; and intimated, by a sign, that he would have her told to
leave the room. Sikes shrugged his shoulders impatiently, as if he
thought the precaution unnecessary; but complied, nevertheless, by
requesting Miss Nancy to fetch him a jug of beer.

"You don't want any beer," said Nancy, folding her arms, and
retaining her seat very composedly.

" I tell you I do ! " replied Sikes.

"Nonsense," rejoined the girl coolly. "Go on, Fagin. I know
what he's going to say. Bill ; he needn't mind me."

The Jew still hesitated. Sikes looked from one to the other in
some siu-prise.

" Why, you don't mind the old girl, do you, Fagin ? " he asked at
length. " You've known her long enough to trust her, or the Devil's
in it. She ain't one to blab. Are you, Nancy ? "

" I should think not ! " replied the young lady : drawing her chair
up to the table, and putting her elbows upon it.

" No, no, my dear, I know you're not," said the Jew ; " but "

and again the old man paused.

" But wot ? " inquired Sikes.

" I didn't know whether she mightn't p'r'aps be out of sorts, you
know, my dear, as she was the other night," replied the Jew.

At this confession. Miss Nancy burst into a loud laugh ; and, swal-
lowing a glass of brandy, shook her head with an air of defiance, and
burst into sundry exclamations of " Keep the game a-going ! " " Never
say die ! " and the like. These seemed to have the effect of re-assur-
ing both gentlemen ; for the Jew nodded his head with a satisfied air,
and resumed his seat : as did Mr. Sikes likewise.

" Now, Fagin," said Nancy with a laugh. " Tell Bill at once, about
Oliver ! "

" Ha ! you're a clever one, my dear : the sharpest girl I ever saw ! "
said the Jew, patting her on the neck. " It was about Oliver I was
going to speak, sure enough. Ha ! ha ! ha ! "

" What about him ? " demanded Sikes.

" He's the boy for you, my dear," replied the Jew in a hoarse
whisper ; laying his. finger on the side of his nose, and grinning
frightfully.

" He ! " exclaimed Sikes.

" Have him. Bill ! " said Nancy. " I would, if I was in your place.
He mayn't be so much up, as any of the others ; but that's not what
you want, if he's only to open a door for you. Depend upon it he's
R safe one, Bill."

120 Oliver Twist.

" I know he is," rejoined Fagin. " He's been in good training tliesd
last few weeks, and it's time he began to work for his bread. Besides,
the others are all too big."

" Well, he is just the size I want," said Mr. Sikes, ruminating.

" And will do everything you want, Bill, my dear," interposed the
Jew ; " he can't help himself. That is, if you frighten him enough."

" Frighten him ! " echoed Sikes. " It'll be no sham frightening,
mind you. If there's anything queer about him when we once get
into the work ; in for a penny, in for a pound. You won't see him
alive again, Fagin. Think of that, before you send him. Mark my
words ! " said the robber, poising a crowbar, which he had drawn from
under the bedstead.

" I've thought of it all," said the Jew with energy. " I've — I've
had my eye upon him, my dears, close — close. Once let him feel
that he is one of us ; once fill his mind with the idea that he has been
a thief; and he's ours! Ours for his life. Oho! It couldn't have
come about better ! " The old man crossed his arms upon his breast ;
and, drawing his head and shoulders into a heap, literally hugged
himself for joy.

" Ours ! " said Sikes. " Yours, you mean."

" Perhaps I do, my dear," said the Jew, with a shrill chuckle.
" Mine, if you like, Bill."

" And wot," said Sikes, scowling fiercely on his agreeable friend,
" wot makes you take so much pains about one chalk-faced kid, when
you know there are fifty boys snoozing about Common Garden every
night, as you might pick and choose from ? "

" Because they're of no use to me, my dear," replied the Jew, with
some confusion, " not worth the taking. Their looks convict 'em when
they get into trouble, and I lose 'em all. With this boy, properly
managed, my dears, I could do what I couldn't with twenty of them.
Besides," said the Jew, recovering his self-possession, " he has us now
if he could only give us leg-bail again ; and he must be in the same
boat with us. Never mind how he came there ; it's quite enough for
my power over him that he was in a robbery ; that's aU I want. Now,
how much better this is, than being obliged to put the poor leetle boy
out of the way — which would be dangerous, and we should lose by it
besides."

" When is it to be done ? " asked Nancy, stopping some turbulent
exclamation on the part of Mr. Sikes, expressive of the disgust with
which he received Fagin's affectation of humanity.

" Ah, to be sure," said the Jew ; " when is it to be done, Bill ? "

" I planned with Toby, the night arter to-morrow," rejoined Sikes
in a Burly voice, " if he heerd nothing from me to the contrairy."

" Good," said the Jew ; " there's no moon."

" No," rejoined Sikes.

" It's all arranged about bringing off the swag, is it ? " asked the
Jew.

Preliminaries adjusted, 121

Sikes nodde<3.

" And about "

"Oh, ah, it's all planned," rejoined Sikes, interrupting him.
" Never mind particulars. You'd better bring the boy here to-morrow
night. I shall get off the stones an hour arter daybreak. Then you
hold your tongue, and keep the melting-pot ready, and that's all you'll
have to do."

After some discussion, in which all three took an active part, it was
decided that Nancy should repair to the Jew's next evening when the
night had set in, and bring Oliver away with her; Fagin craftily
observing, that, if he evinced any disinclination to the task, he would
be more willing to accompany the girl who had so recently interfered
in his behalf, than anybody else. It was also solemnly arranged that
poor Oliver should, for the pui'poses of the contemplated expedition,
be unreservedly consigned to the care and custody of Mr. William
Sikes ; and farther, that the said Sikes should deal with him as he
thought fit ; and should not be held responsible by the Jew for any
mischance or evil that might befall him, or any punishment with
which it might be necessary to visit him : it being understood that, to
render the compact in this respect binding, any representations made
by Mr. Sikes on his return should be required to be confirmed and
corroborated, in all important particulars, by the testimony of flash
Toby Crackit.

These preliminaries adjusted, Mr. Sikes proceeded to drink brandy
at a furious rate, and to flourish the crowbar in an alarming manner ;
yelling forth, at the same time, most unmusical snatches of song,
mingled with wild execrations. At length, in a fit of professional
enthusiasm, he insisted upon producing his box of housebreaking
tools : which he had no sooner stumbled in with, and opened for the
purpose of explaining the nature and properties of the various imple-
ments it contained, and the peculiar beauties of their construction,
than he fell over the box upon the floor, and went to sleep where
he fell.

" Good-night, Nancy," said the Jew, muffing himself up as before.

« Good-night."

Their eyes met, and the Jew scrutinised her, narrowly. There was
no flinching about the giil. She was as true and earnest in the matter
as Toby Crackit himself could be.

The Jew again bade her good-night, and, bestowing a sly kick upon
the prostrate form of Mr. Sikes while her back was turned, groped
down-stairs.

" Always the way ! " muttered the Jew to himself as he turned
homeward. " The worst of these women is, that a very little thing
serves to call up some long-forgotten feeling ; and the best of them
is, that it never lasts. Ha ! ha ! The man against the child, for a
bag of gold ! "

Beguiling the time with these pleasant reflections, Mr. Fagin wended

122 Oliver Tzvist,

his way, throngh mud and miro, to his gloomy abode : where the
Dodger was sitting up, impatiently awaiting his return.

" Is Oliver a-bed ? I want to speak to him," was his first remark
as they descended the stairs.

" Hours ago," replied the Dodger, throwing open a door. " Here
he is!"

The boy was lying, fast asleep, on a rude bed upon the floor ; so
pale with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that
he looked like death ; not death as it shows in shroud and cof&u, but
in the guise it wears when life has just departed ; when a young and
gentle spirit has, but an instant, fled to Heaven, and the gross aii* of
the world has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it
hallowed,

" Not now," said the Jew, turning softly away. " To-morrow.
To-morrow."

CHAPTER XX.

WHKREIN OLIVER IS DELIVEKED OVER TO MR. WILLIAM SIKES.

When Oliver awoke in the morning, he was a good deal surprised to
find that a new pair of shoes, with strong thick soles, had been placed
at his bedside ; and that his old shoes had been removed. At first, he
was pleased with the discovery: hoping that it might be the fore-
runner of his release ; but such thoughts were quickly dispelled, on
his sitting down to breakfast along with the Jew, who told him, in a
tone and manner which increased his alarm, that he was to be taken
to the residence of Bill Sikes that night.

" To — to — stop there, sir ? " asked Oliver, anxiously.

"No, no, my dear. Not to stop there," replied the Jew. "We
shouldn't Kke to lose you. Don't be afraid Oliver, you shall come
back to us again. Ha ! ha ! ha 1 We won't be so cruel as to send
you away, my dear. Oh no, no ! "

The old man, who was stooping over the fire toasting a piece of
bread, looked round as he bantered Oliver thus ; and chuckled as if
to show that he knew he would still be very glad to get away if he
could.

" I suppose," said the Jew, fixing his eyes on Oliver, " you want to
know what you're going to Bill's for — eh, my dear ? "

Oliver coloured, involuntarily, to find that the old thief had been
reading his thoughts ; but boldly said, Yes, he did want to know.

" Why, do you think ? " inquired Fagin, parrying the question.

" Indeed I don't know, sir," replied Oliver.

" Bah ! " said the Jew, turning away with a disappointed countenance

The Jew's Admonition. 123

from a close perusal of the boy's face. " Wait till Bill tolls von,
then."

The Jew seemed much vexed by Oliver's not expressing any greater
curiosity on the subject ; but the truth is, that, although Oliver felt
veiy anxious, he was too much confused by the earnest cunning of
Fagin's looks, and his own speculations, to make any further inquiries
just then. He had no other opportunity : for the Jew remained very
surly and silent till night : when he prepared to go abroad.

" You may burn a candle," said the Jew, putting one upon the
table. " And here's a book JFor you to read, till they come to fetch
you. Good-night ! "

" Good-night ! " replied Oliver, softly.

The Jew walked to the door : looking over his shoulder at the boy
as he went. Suddenly stopping, he called him by his name.

Oliver looked up ; the Jew, pointing to the candle, motioned him
to light it. He did so ; and, as he placed the candlestick upon the
table, saw that the Jew was gazing fixedly at him, with lowering and
contracted brows, from the dark end of the room.

" Take heed, Oliver ! take heed ! " said the old man, shaking his
right hand before him in a warning manner. " He's a rough man,
and thinks nothing of blood when his own is up. Whatever falls out,
say nothing ; and do what he bids yon. Mind ! " Placing a strong
emphasis on the last word, he suffered his features gradually to
resolve themselves into a ghastly grin, and, nodding his head, left the
room.

Oliver leaned his head upon his hand when the old man disappeared,
and pondered, with a trembling heart, on the words he had just heard.
The more he thought of the Jew's admonition, the more he was at a
loss to divine its real purpose and meaning. He could think of no
bad object to be attained by sending him to Sikes, which would not
be equally well answered by his remaining with Fagin; and after
meditating for a long time, concluded that he had been selected to
perform some ordinary menial offices for the housebreaker, until
another boy, better suited for his purpose, could be engaged. He was
too well accustomed to suflfering, and had suffered too much where he
was, to bewail the prospect of change very severely. He remained
lost in thought for some minutes ; and then, with a heavy sigh, snuffed
the candle, and, taking up the book which the Jew had left with him,
began to read.

Ho turned over the leaves. Carelessly at first ; but, lighting on a
passage which attracted his attention, he soon became intent upon the
volume. It was a history of the lives and trials of great criminals ;
and the pages were soiled and thumbed with use. Here, he read of
dreadful crimes that made the blood run cold ; of secret murders that
had been committed by the lonely wayside ; of bodies hidden from
the eye of man in deep pits and wells : which would not keep them
down, deep as they were, but had yielded them up at last, after many

124 Oliver Twist.

years, and so maddened the murderers with the sight, that in their
horror they had confessed their guUt, and yelled for the gibbet to end
their agony. Here, too, he read of men who, lying in their beds at
dead of night, had been tempted (so they said) and led on, by their
own bad thoughts, to such dreadful bloodshed as it made the flesh
creep, and the limbs quail, to think of. The terrible descriptions
were so real and vivid, that the sallow pages seemed to turn red
with gore ; and the words upon them, to be sounded in his ears, as if
they were whispered, in hollow murmui'S, by the spirits of the dead.

In a paroxysm of fear, the boy closed the book, and thrust it from
him. Then, falling upon his knees, he prayed Heaven to spare him
from such deeds ; and rather to will that he should die at once, than
be reserved for crimes, so fearful and appalling. By degrees, he grew
more calm, and besought, in a low and broken voice, that he might be
rescued from his present dangers ; and that if any aid were to be raised
up for a poor outcast boy who had never known the love of friends or
kindred, it might come to him now, when, desolate and deserted, he
stood alone in the midst of wickedness and guilt.

He had concluded his prayer, but still remained with his head
buried in his hands, when a rustling noise aroused him.

" What's that ! " he cried, starting up, and catching sight of a figure
standing by the door. " Who's there ? "

" Me. Only me," replied a tremulous voice.

Oliver raised the candle above his head : and looked towards the
door. It was Nancy.

" Put down the light," said the girl, turning away her head. " It
hurts my eyes."

Oliver saw that she was very pale, and gently inquired if she were
ill. The girl threw herself into a chair, with her back towards him :
and wrung her hands ; but made no reply.

" God forgive me ! " she cried after a while, " I never thought of
this."

" Has anything happened ? " asked Oliver. " Can I help you ? 1
will if I can. I will, indeed."

She rocked herself to and fro ; caught her throat ; and, uttering a
gurgling sound, gasped for breath.

" Nancy ! " cried Oliver, " What is it ? "

The girl beat her hands upon her knees, and her feet upon the
ground ; and, suddenly stopping, drew her shawl close round her :
and shivered with cold.

Oliver stirred the fire. Drawing her chair close to it, she sat there,
for a little time, without speaking ; but at length she raised her head,
afid looked round.

" I don't know what comes over me sometimes," said she, affecting
to busy herself in arranging her dress ; "it's this damp dirty room, I
think. Now, Nolly, dear, are you ready ? **

" Am I to go with you ? " asked Oliver.

A Caution from Nancy. 125

*' Yes. I have come from Bill," replied the girl. " You are to go
with me."

" What for ? " asked Oliver, recoiling.

" What for ? " echoed the girl, raising her eyes, and averting them
again, the moment they encountered the boy's face. " Oh ! For no
harm."

" I don't believe it," said Oliver : who had watched her closely.

"Have it your own way," rejoined the girl, affecting to laugh.
" For no good, then."

Oliver could see that he had some power over the girl's better
feelings, and, for an instant, thought of appealing to her compassion
for his helpless state. But, then, the thought darted across his mind
that it was barely eleven o'clock ; and that many people were still in
the streets : of whom surely some might be found to give credence to
his tale. As the reflection occurred to him, he stepped forward : and
said, somewhat hastily, that he was ready.

Neither his brief consideration, nor its purport, was lost on his
companion. She eyed him narrowly, while he spoke ; and cast upon
him a look of intelligence which sufficiently showed that she guessed
what had been passing in his thoughts.

" Hush ! " said the girl, stooping over him, and pointing to the door
as she looked cautiously round. " You can't help yourself. I have
tried hard for you, but all to no purpose. You are hedged round and
round. If ever you are to get loose from here, this is not the time."

Struck by the energy of her manner, Oliver looked up in her face
with great surprise. She seemed to speak the truth ; her countenance
was white and agitated ; and she trembled with very earnestness.

" I have saved you from being ill-used once, and I will again, and I
do now," continued the girl aloud ; " for those who would have fetched
you, if I had not, would have been far more rough than me. I have
promised for your being quiet and silent ; if you are not, you will
only do harm to yourself and me too, and perhaps be my death. See
here ! I have borne all this for you already, as true as God sees me
show it."

She pointed, hastily, to some livid bruises on her neck and arms ;
and continued, with great rapidity :

" Eemember this ! And don't let me suffer more for you, just now.
If I could help you, I would ; but I have not the power. They don't
mean to harm you ; whatever they make you do, is no fault of yours.
Hush 1 Every word from you is a blow for me. Give me your hand.
Make haste ! Your hand ! "

She caught the hand which Oliver instinctively placed in hers, and,
blowing out the light, drew him after her up the stairs. The door
was opened, quickly, by some one shrouded in the darkness, and was
as quickly closed, when they had passed out. A hackney-cabriolet
was in waiting; with the same vehemence which she had exhibited
in addressing Oliver, the girl pulled him in with her, and drew the

126 Oliver Tivist

curtains close. Tlic driver wanted no directions, but lashed his horse
into full speed, without the delay of an instant.

The girl still held Oliver fast by the hand, and continued to pour
into his ear, the warnings and assurances she had already imparted.
All was so quick and hurried, that he had scarcely time to recollect
where he was, or how he came there, when the carriage stopped at the
house to which the Jew's steps had been directed on the previous
evening.

For one brief moment, Oliver cast a hurried glance along the empty
street, and a cry for help hung upon his lips. But the girl's voice
was in his ear, beseeching him in such tones of agony to remember
her, that he had not the heart to utter it. While he hesitated, the
opportunity was gone; he was ali*eady in the house, and the door
was shut.

" This way," said the girl, releasing her hold for the first time.
" Bill ! "

" Hallo ! " replied Sikes : appearing at the head of the stairs, with
a candle. " Oh ! That's the time of day. Come on 1 "

This was a very strong expression of approbation, an uncommonly
hearty welcome, from a person of Mr. Sikes' temperament. Nancy,
appearing much gratified thereby, saluted him cordially.

" Bull's-eye's gone home with Tom," observed Sikes, as he lighted
them up. " He'd have been in the way."

" That's right," rejoined Nancy.

" So you've got the kid," said Sikes, when they had all reached the
room : closing the door as he spoke.

" Yes, here he is," replied Nancy.

" Did he come quiet ? " inquired Sikes.

" Like a lamb," rejoined Nancy.

" I'm glad to hear it," said Sikes, looking grimly at Oliver ; " for
the sake of his young carcase : as would otherways have sufiered for
it. Come here, young 'un ; and let me retid you a lectur', which is as
well got over at once."

Thus addressing his new pupil, Mr, Sikes pulled off Oliver's cap
and threw it into a comer ; and then, taking him by the shoulder, sat
himself down by the table, and stood the boy in front of him.

" Now, first : do you know wot this is ? " inquired Sikes, taking up
a ]X)cket-pistol which lay on the table.

Oliver replied in the affirmative.

" Well, then, look here," continued Sikes. " This is powder ; that
'ere's a bullet ; and this is a little bit of a old hat for waddin'"

Oliver murmured his comprehension of the different bodies referred
to ; and Mr. Sikes proceeded to load the pistol, with great nicety and
deliberation.

" Now it's loaded," said Mr. Sikes, when he had finished.

" Yes, I see it is, sir," replied Oliver.

" Well," said the robber, grasping Oliver's wrist, and putting the

At the Robber's House. 127

barrel so close to his temple that they touched ; at which moment the
boy could not repress a start ; " if you speak a word when you're out
o' doors with me, except when I speak to you, that loading will be in
your head without notice. So, if you do make up your mind to speak
without leave, say your prayers first."

Having bestowed a scowl upon the object of this warning, to increase
its effect, Mr. Sikes continued.

" As near as I know, there isn't anybody as would be asking very
partickler arter you, if you was disposed of ; so I needn't take this
devil-and-all of trouble to explain matters to you, if it warn't for your
own good. D'ye hear me ? "

" The short and the long of what you mean," said Nancy : speaking
very emphatically, and slightly frowning at Oliver as if to bespeak his
serious attention to her words : " is, that if you're crossed by him in
this job you have on hand, you'll prevent his ever telling tales after-
wards, by shooting him through the head, and will take your chance
of swinging for it, as you do for a great many other things in the way
of business, every month of your life."

" That's it ! " observed Mr. Sikes, approvingly ; " women can always
put things in fewest words. — Except when it's blowing up ; and then
they lengthens it out. And now that he's thoroughly up to it, let's
have some supper, and get a snooze before starting."

In pursuance of this request, Nancy quickly laid the cloth ; dis-
appearing for a few minutes, she presently returned with a pot of
porter and a'dish of cheep's heads : which gave occasion to several
pleasant witticisms on the part of Mr. Sikes, founded upon the singular
coincidence of " jemmies " being a cant name, common to them, and
also to an ingenious implement much used in his profession. Indeed,
the worthy gentleman, stimulated perhaps by the immediate prospect
of being on active service, was in great spirits and good humour ; in
proof whereof, it may be here remarked, that he humorously drank all
the beer at a draught, and did not utter, on a rough calculation, more
than four-score oaths during the whole progress of the meal.

Supper being ended — it may be easily conceived that Oliver had no
great appetite for it — Mr. Sikes disposed of a couple of glasses of
spirits and water, and threw himself on the bed ; ordering Nancy,
with many imprecations in case of failure, to call him at five pre-
cisely. Oliver stretched himself in his clothes, by command of the
same authority, on a mattress upon the floor ; and the girl, mending
the fire, sat before it, in readiness to rouse them at the appointed time.

For a long time Oliver lay awake, thinking it not impossible that
Nancy might seek that opportunity of whispering some further advice ;
but the girl sat brooding over the fire, without moving, save now and
then to trim the light. Weary with watching and anxiety, he at
length fall asleep.

When he awoke, the table was covered with tea-things, and Sikes
was thrusting various articles into the pockets of his great-coat, which

1^8 Oliver Twist.

hung over tho back of a chair. Nancy was busily engaged in pre-
paring breakfast. It was not yet daylight ; for the candle was still
burning, and it was quite dark outside. A sharp rain, too, was beating
against the window-panes ; and the sky looked black and cloudy.

" Now, then ! " growled Sikcs, as Oliver started up ; " half-past five !
Look sharp, or you'll get no breakfast ; for it's late as it is."

Oliver was not long in making his toilet ; having taken some
breakfast, he replied to a surly inquiry from Sikes, by saying that he
was quite ready.

Nancy, scarcely looking at the boy, threw him a handkerchief to
tie round his throat ; Sikes gave him a large rough cape to button
over his shoulders. Thus attired, he gave his hand to the robber,
who, merely pausing to show him with a menacing gesture that he
had that same pistol in a side-pocket of his great-coat, clasped
it firmly in his, and, exchanging a farewell with Nancy, led him
away.

Oliver turned, for an instant, when they reached the door, in the
hope of meeting a look from the girl. But she had resumed her old
seat in front of the fire, and sat, perfectly motionless before it.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE EXPEDITION.

It was a cheerless morning when they got into the street ; blowing
and raining hard ; and the clouds looking dull and stormy. The
night had been very wet : large pools of water had collected in the
road : and the kennels were overflowing. There was a faint glimmer-
ing of the coming day in the sky; but it rather aggravated than
relieved the gloom of the scene : the sombre light only serving to
pale that which the street lamps afforded, without shedding any
warmer or brighter tints upon the wet housetops, and dreary streets.
There appeared to be nobody stirring in that quarter of the town ;
the windows of the houses were all closely shut ; and the streets
through which they passed, were noiseless and empty.

By the time they had turned into the Bethnal Green Road, the day
had fairly begun to break. Many of the lamps were already ex-
tinguished ; a few country waggons were slowly toiling on, towards
London ; now and then, a stage-coach, covered with mud, rattled
briskly by : the driver bestowing, as he passed, an admonitory lash
upon the heavy waggoner who, by keeping on the wrong side of the
road, had endangered his arriving at the office, a quarter of a minute
after his time. The public-houses, with gas-lights burning inside,
were already open. By degrees, other shops began to be unclosed,

On the Road out of Town. 129

and a few scattered people were met with. Then, came straggling
groups of labourers going to their work ; then, men and women with
fish-baskets " on their heads ; donkey-carts laden with vegetables ;
chaise-carts filled with live-stock or whole carcasses of meat ; milk-
women with pails; an unbroken concourse of people, trudging out
with various supplies to the eastern suburbs of the town. As they
approached the City, the noise and trafic gradually increased ; when
they threaded the streets between Shoreditch and Smithfield, it had
swelled into a roar of sound and bustle. It was as light as it was
likely to be, till night came on again, and the busy morning of half
the London population had begun.

Turning down Sun Street and Crown Street, and crossing Finsbury
Square, Mr. Sikes struck, by way of Chiswell Street, into Barbican :
thence into Long Lane, and so into Smithfield ; from which latter
place arose a tumult of discordant sounds that filled Oliver Twist
with amazement.

' It was market-morning. The ground was covered, nearly ankle-
deep, with filth and mire ; a thick steam, perpetually rising from the
reeking bodies of the cattle, and mingling with the fog, which seemed
to rest upon the chimney-tops, hung heavily above. All the pens in
the centre of the large area, and as many temporary pens as could bo
crowded into the vacant space, were filled with sheep ; tied up to
posts by the gutter side were long lines of beasts and oxen, three or
four deep. Countrymen, butchers, drovers, hawkers, boys, thieves,
idlers, and vagabonds of every low grade, were mingled together in a
mass; the whistling of drovers, the barking of dogs, the bellowing
and plunging of oxen, the bleating of sheep, the grxmting and squeak-
ing of pigs, the cries of hawkers, the shouts, oaths, and quarrelling on
all sides ; the ringing of bells and roar of voices, that issued from
every public-house ; the crowding, pushing, driving, beating, whoop-
ing, and yelling ; the hideous and discordant din that resounded from
every corner of the market ; and the unwashed, unshaven, squalid,
and dirty figures constantly mnning to and fro, and bursting in and
out of the throng ; rendered it a stunning and bewildering scene,
which quite confounded the senses.

Mr. Sikes, dragging Oliver after him, elbowed his way through the
thickest of the crowd, and bestowed very little attention on the
numerous sights and sounds, which so astonished the boy. He nodded,
twice or thrice, to a passing friend ; and, resisting as many invitations
to take a morning dram, pressed steadily onward, until they were clear
of the turmoil, and had made their way through Hosier Lane into
Holborn.

" Now, young 'un ! " said Sikes, looking up at the clock of St.
Andrew's Church, " hard upon seven ! you must step out. Come,
don't lag behind already. Lazy-legs ! "

Mr. Sikes accompanied this speech with a jerk at his little com-
panion's wrist; Oliver, quickening his pace into a kind of trot

130 Oliver Twist.

between a fast walk anrl a rnn, kept up with the rapid strides of the
housebreaker as well as ho could.

They held their course at this rate, until they had passed Hyde
Park corner, and were on their way to Kensington: when Sikes
relaxed his pace, until an empty cart which was at some little distance
behind, came up. Seeing " Hounslow " written on it, ho asked the
driver with as much civility as he could assume, if he would give
them a lift as far as Isleworth.

" Jump up," said the man. " Is that your boy ? "

" Yes ; he's my boy," replied Sikes, looking hard at Oliver, and
putting his hand abstractedly into the pocket where the pistol was.

" Your father walks rather too quick for you, don't he, my man ? "
inquired the driver : seeing that Oliver was out of breath.

"Not a bit of it," replied Sikes, interposing. "He's used to it.
Here, take hold of my hand, Ned. In with you ! "

Thus addressing Oliver, he helped him into the cart; and the
driver, pointing to a heap of sacks, told him to lie down there, and
rest himself.

As they passed the different mile-stones, Oliver wondered, more
and more, where his companion meant to take him. Kensington,
Hammersmith, Chiswick, Kew Bridge, Brentford, were all passed;
and yet they went on as steadily as if they had only just begun their
journey. At length, they came to a public-house called the Coach
and Horses : a little way beyond which, another road appeared to turn
off. And here, the cart stopped.

Sikes dismounted with great -precipitation, holding Oliver by the
hand all the while ; and lifting him down directly, bestowed a furious
look upon him, and rapped the side-pocket with his fist, in a significant
manner.

" Good-bye, boy," said the man.

" He's sulky," replied Sikes, giving him a shake ; " he's sulky. A
young dog ! Don't mind him."

" Not I ! " rejoined the other, getting into his cart. " It's a fine
day, after all." And he drove away.

Sikes waited until he had fairly gone ; and then, telling Oliver he
might look about him if he wanted, once again led him onward on his
journey.

They turned round to the left, a short way past the public-house ;
and then, taking a right-hand road, walked on for a long time : passing
many large gardens and gentlemen's houses on both sides of the way,
and stopping for nothing but a little beer, until they reached a town.
Here against the wall of a house, Oliver saw written up in pretty
large letters, "Hampton." They lingered about, in the fields, for
some hours. At length, they came back into the town ; and, turning
into an old public-house with a defaced sign-board, ordered some
dinner by the kitchen fire.

The kitchen was an old, low-ropfed room ; with a great beam across

A Fresh Start. 131

the middle of the ceiling, and benches, with high backs to them, by
the fire ; on \Yhich were seated several rough men in smock-frocks,
drinking and smoking. They took no notice of Oliver; and very
little of Sikes ; and, as Sikes took very little notice of them, he and
his young comrade sat in a corner by themselves, without being much
troubled by their company.

They had some cold meat for dinner, and sat so long after it, while
Mr. Sikes indulged himself ^nth three or four pipes, that Oliver
began to feel quite certain they were not going any further. Being
much tired with the walk, and getting up so early, he dozed a little at
first ; then, quite overpowered by fatigue and the fumes of the tobacco,
fell asleep.

It was quite dark when he was awakened by a push from Sikes.
Rousing himself sufSciently to sit up and look about him, he found
that worthy in close fellowship and communication with a labouring
man, over a pint of ale.

" So, you're going on to Lower Halliford, are you ? " inquired Sikes.

" Yes, I am," replied the man, who seemed a little the worse — or
better, as the case might be — for drinking ; " and not slow about it
neither. My horse hasn't got a load behind him going back, as he
had coming up in the mornin' ; and ho won't be long a-doing of it.
Here's luck to him ! Ecod ! he's a good 'un ! "

" Could you give my boy and me a lift as far as there ? " demanded
Sikes, pushing the ale towards his new friend.

" If you're going directly, I can," replied the man, looking out of
the pot. " Are you going to Halliford ? "

" Going on to Shepperton," replied Sikes.

" I'm your man, as far as I go," replied the other. " Is all paid,
Becky?"

" Yes, the other gentleman's paid," replied the girl.

" I say ! " said the man, with tipsy gravity ; " that won't do, you
know."

" Why not ? " rejoined Sikes. " You're a-going to accommodate na,
and wot's to prevent my standing treat for a pint or so, in return ? "

The stranger reflected upon this argument, with a very profound
face ; having done so, he seized Sikes by the hand : and declared ho
was a real good fellow. To which Mr. Sikes replied, he was joking ;
as, if ho had been sober, there would have been strong reason to
suppose ho was.

After the exchange of a few more compliments, they bade the
company good-night, and went out ; the girl gathering up the potR
and glasses as they did so, and lounging out to the door, with her
hands full, to see the party start.

The horse, whose health had been drunk in his absence, was stand-
ing outside : ready harnessed to the cart. Oliver and Sikes got in
without any further ceremony ; and the man to whom he belonged,
having lingered for a minute or two " to bear him up," and to defy

132 ' Oliver Twist,

the hostler and the world to produce his equal, mounted also. Then,
the hostler was told to give the horse his head ; and, his head being
given him, he made a very unpleasant use of it : tossing it into the
air with great disdain, and running into the parlour windows over the
way ; after performing those feats, and supporting himself for a short
time on his hind-legs, he started off at great speed, and rattled out of
the town right gallantly.

The night was very dark. A damp mist rose from the river, and
the marshy ground about ; and spread itself over the dreary fields.
It was piercing cold, too ; all was gloomy and black. Not a word was
spoken ; for the driver had grown sleepy ; and Sikes was in no mood
to lead him into conversation. Oliver sat huddled together, in a
corner of the cart; bewildered with alarm and apprehension; and
figuring strange objects in the gaunt trees, whose branches waved
grimly to and fro, as if in some fantastic joy at the desolation of the
secne.

As they passed Sunbury Church, the clock struck seven. There
was a light in the ferry-house window opposite : which streamed across
the road, and threw into more sombre shadow a dark yew-tree with
graves beneath it. There was a dull sound of falling water not far
off ; and the leaves of the old tree stirred gently in the night wind.
It seemed like quiet music for the repose of the dead.

Sunbui'y was passed through, and they came again into the lonely
road. Two or three miles more, and the cart stopped. Sikes alighted,
took Oliver by the hand, and they once again walked on.

They turned into no house at Shepperton, as the weary boy had
expected; but still kept walking on, in mud and darkness, through
gloomy lanes and over cold open wastes, until they came within sight
of the lights of a town at no great distance. On looking intently
forward, Oliver saw that the water was just below them, and that they
were coming to the foot of a bridge.

Sikes kept straight on, until they were close upon the bridge ; then
turned suddenly down a bank upon the left.

" The water ! " thought Oliver, turning sick with fear. " He has
brought me to this lonely place to murder me ! "

He was about to throw himself on the ground, and make one struggle
for his young life, when he saw that they stood before a solitary
house : all ruinous and decayed. There was a window on each side
of the dilapidated entrance ; and one story above ; but no light was
visible. The house was dark, dismantled : and, to all appearance,
uninhabited.

Sikes, with Oliver's hand still in his, softly approached the low
porch, and raised the latch. The door yielded to the pressure, and
they passed in together.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE BUBGLABT.

" Hallo ! " cried a loud, hoarse voice, as soon as tliey set foot in the
passage.

" Don't make sucli a row," said Sikes, bolting the door. " Show a
glim, Toby."

" Aba ! my pal ! " cried the same voice. " A glim, Barney, a glim !
Show the gentleman in, Barney ; wake up first, if convenient."

The speaker appeared to throw a boot-jack, or some such article, at
the person he addressed, to rouse him from his slumbers : for the
noise of a wooden body, falKng violently, was heard ; and then an
indistinct muttering, as of a man between asleep and awake.

" Do you hear ? " cried the same voice. " There's Bill Sikes in the
passage with nobody to do the civil to him ; and you sleeping there,
as if you took laudanum with your meals, and nothing stronger. Are
you any fresher now, or do you want the iron candlestick to wake you
thoroughly?"

A pair of slipshod feet shuffled, hastily, across the bare floor of the
room, as this interrogatory was put ; and there issued, from a door on
the right hand : first, a feeble candle : and next, the form of the same
individual who has been heretofore described as labouring under tho
infirmity of speaking through his nose, and officiating as waiter at
the public-house on Safi'ron Hill.

" Bister Sikes ! " exclaimed Barney, with real or counterfeit joy ;
" cub id, sir ; cub id."

" Here ! you get on first," said Sikes, putting Oliver in front of
him. " Quicker ! or I shall tread upon your heels."

Muttering a curse upon his tardiness, Sikes pushed Oliver before
him ; and they entered a low dark room with a smoky fire, two or
three broken chairs, a table, and a very old couch : on which, with
his legs much higher than his head, a man was reposing at full length,
smoking a long clay pipe. He was dressed in a smartly-cut snuff-
coloured coat, with large brass buttons ; an orange neckerchief ; a
coarse, staring, shawl-pattern waistcoat ; and drab breeches. Mr.
Crackit (for he it was) had no very great quantity of hair, either upon
his head or face ; but what he had, was of a reddish dye, and tortured
into long corkscrew curls, through which he occasionally thrust some
very dirty fingers, ornamented with large common rings. He was a
trifle above the middle size, and apparently rather weak in tho legs ;
but this circumstance by no means detracted from his own admiration
of his top-boots, which he contemplated, in their elevated situation,
with lively satisfaction.

" Bill, my boy I " said this figure, turning his head towards the

134 Oliver Twist

door, " I'm glad to see yon. I was almost afraid you'd given it up :
in wliich case I should have made a personal wcntur. Hallo ! "

Uttering this exclamation in a tone of great surprise, as his eye
rested on Oliver, Mr. Toby Crackit brought himself into a sitting
posture, and demanded who that was.

" The boy. Only the boy ! " replied Sikes, drawing a chair towards
the fire.

" Wud of Bister Fagid's lads," exclaimed Barney, with a grin.

" Fagin's, eh ! " exclaimed Toby, looking at Oliver. " Wot an
inwalable boy that'll make, for the old ladies' pockets in cliapels!
His mug is a fortin' to him."

*' There — there's enough of that," interposed Sikes, impatiently ;
and stooping over his recumbent friend, he whispered a few words in
his ear: at which Mr. Crackit laughed immensely, and honoured
Oliver with a long stare of astonishment.

" Now," said Sikes, as he resumed his seat, " if you'll give us some-
thing to eat and drink while we're waiting, you'll put some heart in
us ; or in me, at all events. Sit down by the fire, younker, and rest
yourself ; for you'll have to go out mth us again to-night, though not
very far off."

Oliver looked at Sikes, in mute and timid wonder ; and drawing a
stool to the fire, sat with his aching head upon his hands, scarcely
knowing where he was, or what was passing around him.

"Here," said Toby, as the young Jew placed some fragments of
food, and a bottle upon the table, " Success to the crack I " He rose
to honour the toast ; and, carefully depositing his empty pij)e in a
corner, advanced to the table, filled a glass with spirits, and drank off
its contents. Mr. Sikes did the same.

" A drain for the boy," said Toby, half-filling a wine-glass. " Down
with it, innocence."

" Indeed," said Oliver, looking pitoously up into the man's face ;
"indeed, I "

" Down with it ! " echoed Toby. " Do you think I don't know
what's good for you ? Tell him to drink it, Bill."

" He had better ! " said Sikes, clapping his hand upon his pocket.
"Bum my body, if he isn't more trouble than a whole famUy of
Dodgers. Drink it, you perwerse imp ; drink it ! "

Frightened by the menacing gestures of the two men, Oliver hastily
swallowed the contents of the glass, and immediately fell into a violent
fit of coughing : which delighted Toby Crackit and Barney, and even
drew a smile from the surly Mr. Sikes.

This done, and Sikes having satisfied his appetite (Oliver could eat
nothing but a small crust of bread which they made him swallow), the
two men laid themselves down on chairs for a short nap. Oliver
retained his stool by the fire ; Barney, wrapped in a blanket, stretched
himself on the floor : close outside the fender.

They slept, or appeared to sleep, for some time ; nobody stirring

The Dead Time of Night. 1 35

but Barney, who rose once or twice to throw coals on the fire. Oliver
fell into a heavy doze : imagining himself straying along the gloomy
lanes, or wandering about the dark churchyard, or retracing some ono
or other of the scenes of the past day : when he was roused by Toby
Cracldt jumping up and declaring it was half-past one.

In an instant, the other two were on their legs, and all were actively
engaged in busy preparation. Sikes and his companion enveloped
their necks and chins in large dark shawls, and drew on their great-
coats; Barney, opening a cupboard, brought forth seveitvl articles,
which he hastily crammed into the pockets.

" Barkers for me, Barney," said Toby Crackit.

" Here they are," replied Barney, producing a pair of pistols. " Yon
loaded them yourself."

" All right ! " replied Toby, stowing them away. " The per-
suaders ? "

" I've got *em," replied Sikes.

"Crape, keys, centre-bits, darkies — nothing forgotten?" inquired
Toby: fastening a small crowbar to a loop inside the skirt of his
coat.

" All right," rejoined his companion. " Bring them bits of timber,
Barney. That's the time of day."

WiUi these words, he took a thick stick from Barney's hands, who,
having delivered another to Toby, busied himself in fastening on
Oliver's cape.

" Now then ! " said Sikes, holding out his hand.

Oliver: who was completely stupefied by the unwonted exercise,
and the air, and the drink which had been forced upon him : put his
hand mechanically into that which Sikes extended for the purpose.

" Take his other hand, Toby," said Sikes. " Look out, Barney."

The man went to the door, and returned to announce that all was
quiet. The two robbers issued forth with Oliver between them.
Barney, having made all fast, rolled himself up as before, and was
soon asleep again.

It was now intensely dark. The fog was much heavier than it had
been in the early part of the night ; and the atmosphere was so damp,
that, although no rain fell, Oliver's hair and eyebrows, within a few
minutes after leaving the house, had become stiff with the half-frozen
moisture that was floating about. They crossed the bridge, and kept
on towards the lights which he had seen before. They were at no
great distance off; and, as they walked pretty briskly, they soon
arrived at Chertsey.

" Slap through the town," whispered Sikes ; " there'll be nobody
in the way, to-night, to see us."

Toby acquiesced ; and they hurried through the main street of the
little town, which at that late hour was wholly deserted. A dim
light shone at intervals from some bedroom window ; and the hoarse
barking of dogs occasionally broke the silence of the night. But

136 Oliver Twist.

there was nobody abroad. They had cleared the town, as the church-
bell struck two.

Quickening their pace, they turned up a road upon the left hand.
After walking about a quarter of a mile, they stopped before a
detached house surrounded by a wall: to the top of which, Toby
Crackit, scarcely pausing to take breath, climbed in a twinkling.

" The boy next," said Toby. " Hoist him up ; 111 catch hold of
him."

Before Oliver Iiad time to look round, Sikes had caught him under
the arms ; and in three or four seconds he and Toby were lying on
the grass on the other side. Sikes followed directly. And they stole
cautiously towards the house.

And now, for the first time, Oliver, well-nigh mad with grief and
terror, saw that housebreaking and robbery, if not murder, were the
objects of the expedition. He clasped his hands together, and in-
voluntarily uttered a subdued exclamation of horror. A mist came
before his eyes ; the cold sweat stood upon his ashy face ; his limbs
failed him ; and he sank upon his knees.

" Get up ! " murmured Sikes, trembling with rage, and drawing the
pistol from his pocket ; " Get up, or I'll strew your brains upon the
grass."

" Oh ! for God's sake let me go ! " cried Oliver ; " let me run away
and die in the fields. I will never come near London ; never, never !
Oh ! pray have mercy on me, and do not make me steal. For the love
of all the bright Angels that rest in Heaven, have mercy upon me ! "

The man to whom this appeal was made, swore a dreadful oath, and
had cocked the pistol, when Toby, striking it from his grasp, placed
his hand upon the boy's mouth, and dragged him to the house.

" Hush ! " cried the man ; " it won't answer here. Say another
word, and I'll do your business myself with a crack on the head.
That makes no noise, and is quite as certain, and more genteel. Here,
Bill, wrench the shutter open. He's game enough now, I'll engage.
I've seen older hands of his age took the same way, for a minute or
two, on a cold night."

Sikes, invoking terrific imprecations upon Fagin's head for sending
Oliver on such an errand, plied the crowbar vigorously, but with little
noise. After some delay, and some assistance from Toby, the shutter
to which he had referred, swung open on its hinges.

It was a little lattice window, about five feet and a half above the
ground, at the back of the house : which belonged to a scullery, or
small brewing-place, at the end of the passage. The aperture was so
small, that the inmates had probably not thought it worth while to
defend it more securely ; but it was large enough to admit a boy of
Oliver's size, nevertheless. A very brief exercise of Mr. Sikes's art,
sufficed to overcome the fastening of the lattice; and it soon stood
wide open also.

"Now listen, you young limb," whispered Sikes, drawing a dark

o^^^^.

Shot. 137

lantern from his pocket, and throwing the glare full on Oliver's face ;
" I'm a going to pnt yon through there. Take this light ; go softly
up the steps straight afore you, and along the little hall, to the street
door ; unfasten it, and let us in."

" There's a bolt at the top, you won't be able to reach," interposed
Toby. " Stand upon one of the hall chairs. There are three there.
Bill, with a jolly large blue unicorn and gold pitchfork on 'em : which
is the old lady's arms."

" Keep quiet, can't you ? " replied Sikes, with a threatening look.
" The room-door is open, is it ? "

" Wide," replied Toby, after peeping in to satisfy himself. " The
game of that is, that they always leave it open with a catch, so that
the dog, who's got a bed in here, may walk up and down the passage
when he feels wakeful. Ha ! ha ! Barney 'ticed him away to-night.
So neat ! "

Although Mr. Crackit spoke in a scarcely audible whisper, and
laughed without noise, Sikes imperiously commanded him to be silent,
and to get to work. Toby complied, by first producing his lantern,
and placing it on the ground ; then by planting himself firmly with
his head against the wall beneath the window, and his hands upon his
knees, so as to make a step of his back. This was no sooner done,
than Sikes, mounting upon him, put Oliver gently through the window
with his feet first ; and, without leaving hold of his collar, planted
him safely on the floor intide.

" Take this lantern," said Sikes, looking into the room. " You see
the stairs afore you ? "

Oliver, more dead than alive, gasped out, " Yes." Sikes, pointing
to the street-door with the pistol-barrel, briefly advised him to take
notice that he was within shot all the way ; and that if he faltered, he
would fall dead that instant.

"It's done in a minute," said Sikes, in the same low whisper.
" Directly I leave go of you, do your work. Hark ! "

" What's that ? " whispered the other man.

They listened intently.

" Nothing," said Sikes, releasing his hold of Oliver. " Now ! "

In the short time he had had to collect his senses, the boy had
fii-mly resolved that, whether he died in the attempt or not, ho would
make one effort to dart up-stairs from the hall, and alarm the family.
Filled with this idea, he advanced at once, but stealthily.

" Come back ! " suddenly cried Sikes aloud. " Back ! back 1 "

Scared by the sudden breaking of the dead stillness of the place,
and by a loud cry which followed it, Oliver let his lantern fall, and
knew not whether to advance or fly.

The cry was repeated — a light appeared — a vision of two terrified
half-dressed men at the top of the stairs swam before his eyes— a flash
— a loud noise— a smoke— a crash somewhere, but where he knew not,
— and he staggered back.

138 Oliver Twist.

Sikes bad disappeared for an instant ; but be was up again, and
had him by the collar before tbe smoke bad cleared away. He fired
his own pistol after tbe men, wbo were already retreating; and
dragged tbe boy up.

" Clasp your arm tighter," said Sikes, as be drew bim tbrougb tbe
-window. " Give me a sbawl here. They've hit him. Quick ! How
tbe boy bleeds ! "

Then came tbe loud ringing of a bell, mingled with tbe noise of
fire-arms, and tbe shouts of men, and the sensation of being carried
over uneven ground at a rapid pace. And then, the noises grew con-
fused in tbe distance ; and a cold deadly feeling crept over tbe boy's
heart ; and he saw or beard no more.

CHAPTER XXIII.

WHICH CONTAINS THE SUBSTANCE OP A PLEASANT CONVERSATION BE-
TWEEN MR. BUMBLE AND A LADY ; AND SHOWS THAT EVEN A
BEADLE MAY BE SUSCEPTIBLE ON SOME POINTS.

The night was bitter cold. Tbe snow lay on tbe ground, frozen into
a bard tbick crust, so that only tbe heaps that bad drifted into by-
ways and corners were affected by tbe sharp wind that howled abroad :
which, as if expending increased fury on such prey as it found, caught
it savagely up in clouds, and, whirling it into a thousand misty eddies,
scattered it in air. Bleak, dark, and piercing cold, it was a night for
the well-boused and fed to draw round the bright fire and thank God
they were at home ; and for tbe homeless, starving wretch to lay bim
down and die. Many hunger-worn outcasts close their eyes in our
bare streets, at such times, wbo, let their crimes have been what they
may, can hardly open them in a more bitter world.

Such was tbe aspect of out-of-doors affairs, when Mrs. Corney, tbe
matron of tbe workhouse to which our readers have been already
introduced as the birthplace of Oliver Twist, sat herself down before
a cheerful fire in her own little room, and glanced, with no small
degree of complacency, at a small round table : on which stood a tray
of corresponding size, furnished with all necessary materials for the
most grateful meal that matrons enjoy. In fact, Mrs. Corney was
about to solace herself with a cup of tea. As she glanced from tbe
table to tbe fireplace, where the smallest of all possible kettles was
singing a small song in a small voice, her inward satisfaction evidently
increased, — so much so, indeed, that Mrs. Corney smiled.

" Well ! " said the matron, leaning her elbow on the table, and
looking reflectively at the fire ; " I'm sure we have all on us a great
deal to be grateful for ! A great deal, if we did but know it. Ab ! "

Mrs. Coniey has a Visitor. 139

Mrs. Comey eLook her head mournfully, as if deploring the mental
blindness of those paupers who did not know it ; and thrusting a
silver spoon (private property) into the inmost recesses of a two-ounce
tin tea-caddy, proceeded to make the tea.

How slight a thing will disturb the equanimity of our frail minds I
The black teapot, being very small and easily filled, ran over while
Mrs. Comey was moralising; and the water slightly scalded Mrs.
Corney's hand.

" Drat the pot ! " said the worthy matron, setting it down very
hastily on the hob ; " a little stupid thing, that only holds a couple of
cups ! What use is it of, to anybody ! Except," said Mrs. Comey,
pausing, " except to a poor desolate creature like me. Oh dear ! "

With these words, the matron dropped into her chair, and, once
more resting her elbow on the table, thought of her solitary fate.
The small teapot, and the single cup, had awakened in her mind sad
recollections of Mr. Comey (who had not been dead more than five-
and-twenty years) ; and she was overpowered.

" I shall never get another ! " said Mrs. Comey, pettishly ; " I shall
never get another — like him."

Whether this remark bore reference to the husband, or the teapot,
is uncertain. It might have been the latter ; for Mrs. Comey looked
at it as she spoke ; and took it up afterwards. She had just tasted
her first cup, when she was disturbed by a soft tap at the room-door.

" Oh, come in with you ! " said Mrs. Comey, sharply. " Some of
the old women dying, I suppose. They always die when I'm at
meals. Don't stand there, letting the cold air in, don't. What's
amiss now, eh ? "

" Nothing, ma'am, nothing," replied a man's voice.

" Dear me ! " exclaimed the matron, in a much sweeter tone, " is
that Mr. Bumble ? "

" At your service, ma'am," said Mr. Bumble, who had been stopping
outside to rub his shoes clean, and to shake the snow off his coat ; and
who now made his appearance, bearing the cocked hat in one hand
and a bundle in the other. " Shall I shut the door, ma'am ? "

The lady modestly hesitated to reply, lest there should be any im-
propriety in holding an interview with Mr. Bumble, with closed doors.
Mr. Bumble taking advantage of the hesitation, and being very cold
himself, shut it without permission.

" Hard weather, Mr. Bumble," said the matron.

" Hard, indeed, ma'am," replied the beadle. " Anti-porochial
weather this, ma'am. V/e have given away, Mrs. Comey, we have
given away a matter of twenty quartern loaves and a cheese and a
half, this very blessed afternoon ; and yet them paupers are not con-
tented."

"Of course not. When would they be, Mr. Bimible?" said the
matron, sipping her tea.

" When, indeed, ma'am ! " rejoined Mr. Bumble. " Why here's one

X40 Oliver Twist.

man that, in consideration of his wife and large family, has a quartern
loaf and a good pound of cheese, full weight. Is he grateful, ma'am ?
Is he grateful ? Not a copper farthing's worth of it ! What does he
do, ma'am, but ask for a few coals ; if it's only a pocket handkerchief
full, he says! Coals! What would he do with coals? Toast his
cheese with 'em, and then come back for more. That's the way with
these people, ma'am ; give 'em a apron full of coals to-day, and they'll
come back for another, the day after to-morrow, as brazen as
alabaster."

The matron expressed her entire concurrence in this intelligible
simile ; and the beadle went on.

" I never," said Mr. Bumble, " see anything like the pitch it's got
to. The day afore yesterday, a man — you have been a married woman,
ma'am, and I may mention it to you — a man, with hardly a rag upon
his back (here Mrs. Corney looked at the floor), goes to our overseer's
door when he has got company coming to dinner ; and says, he must
bo relieved, Mrs. Corney. As he wouldn't go away, and shocked the
company very much, our overseer sent him out a pound of potatoes
and half a pint of oatmeal. ' My heart ! ' says the ungrateful villain,
' what's the use of Qiis to me ? You might as well give me a pair of
iron spectacles ! ' ' Very good,' says our overseer, taking 'em away
again, * you won't get anything else here.' ' Then I'll die in the
streets ! ' says the vagrant ' Oh no, yon won't,' says our overseer."

" Ha ! ha ! That was very good ! So like Mr. Grannett, wasn't
it ? " interposed the matron. " Well, Mr. Bumble ? "

" Well, ma'am," rejoined the beadle, " he went away ; and he diA
die in the streets. There's a obstinate pauper for you ! "

"It beats anything I could have believed," observed the matron
emphatically. " But don't you think out-of-door relief a very bad
thing, any way, Mr. Bumble ? You're a gentleman of experience, and
ought to know. Come."

"Mrs. Corney," said the beadle, smiling as men smile who are
conscious of superior information, " out-of-door relief, properly
managed : properly managed, ma'am : is the porochial safeguard. The
great principle of out-of-door relief is, to give the paupers exactly
what they don't want ; and then they get tired of coming."

" Dear me 1 " exclaimed Mrs. Corney. " Well, that is a good one,
too ! "

" Yes. Betwixt you and me, ma'am," returned Mr. Bumble, " that's
the great principle ; and that's the reason why, if you look at any
cases that get into them owdacious newspapers, you'll always observe
that sick families have been relieved with slices of cheese. That's
the rule now, Mrs. Corney, all over the country. But, however,"
said the beadle, stopping to unpack his bundle, " these are ofl&cial
secrets, ma'am ; not to be spoken of; except, as I may say, among the
porochial oflBcers, such as ourselves. This is the port wine, ma'am,
that the board ordered for the infirmary; real, fresh, genuine port

.^/^<^^.^^>7?J^y'a^^^'^(^?i/n^^^^^/^

A Friendly Cup of Tea. 141

wine; only out of the cask this forenoon; clear as a bell, and no
sediment ! "

Having held the first bottle up to the light, and shaken it well to
test its excellence, Mr. Bumble placed them both on the top of a chest
of drawers ; folded the handkerchief in which they had been wrapped ;
put it carefully in his pocket ; and took up his hat, as if to go.

" You'll have a very cold walk, Mr. Bumble," said the matron.

" It blows, ma'am," replied Mr. Bumble, turning up his coat-collar,
" enough to cut one's ears off."

The matron looked, from the little kettle, to the beadle, who was
moving towards the door ; and as the beadle coughed, preparatory to
bidding her good -night, bashfully inquired whether — whether he
wouldn't take a cup of tea ?

Mr. Bumble instantaneously turned back his collar again ; laid his
hat and stick upon a chair ; and drew another chair up to the table.
As he slowly seated himself, he looked at the lady. She fixed her
eyes upon the little teapot. Mr. Bumble coughed again, and slightly
smiled.

Mrs. Comey rose to get another cup and saucer from the closet.
As she sat down, her eyes once again encountered those of the gallant
beadle ; she coloured, and applied herself to the task of making his
tea. Again Mr. Bumble coughed — louder this time than he had
coughed yet.

"Sweet? Mr. Bumble?" inquired the matron, taking up the
BUgar-basin.

" Very sweet, indeed, ma'am," replied Mr. Bumble. He fixed his
eyes on Mrs. Corney as he said this; and if ever a beadle looked
tender, Mr. Bumble was that beadle at that moment.

The tea was made, and handed in silence. Mr. Bumble, having
spread a handkerchief over his knees to prevent the crumbs from
sullying the splendour of his shorts, began to eat and drink ; varying
these amusements, occasionally, by fetching a deep sigh ; which, how-
ever, had no injurious efiect upon his appetite, but, on the contrary,
rather seemed to facilitate his operations in the tea and toast depai-t>
ment.

" You have a cat, ma'am, I see," said Mr. Bumble, glancing at one
who, in the centre of her family, was basking before the fire ; " and
kittens too, I declare ! "

" I am so fond of them, Mr, Bumble, you can't think," replied the
matron. " They're so happy, so frolicsome, and so cheerful, that they
are quite companions for me."

" Very nice animals, ma'am," replied Mr. Bumble, approvingly ;
** so very domestic."

" Oh, yes ! " rejoined the matron with enthusiasm ; " so fond of
their home too, that it's quite a pleasure, I'm sure."

" Mrs. Corney, ma'am," said Mr. Bumble, slowly, and marking the
time with his teaspoon, " I mean to say this, ma'am ; that any cat,

142 Oliver Twist.

or kitten, that could live with you, ma'am, and not be fond of its home,
must be a ass, ma'am."

" Ob, Mr. Bumble ! " remonstrated Mrs. Corney.

" It's of no use disguising facts, ma'am," said Mr. Bumble, slowly
flourishing the teaspoon with a kind of amorous dignity which made
him doubly impressive ; " I would drown it myself, with pleasure."

" Then you're a cruel man," said the matron vivaciously, as she
held out her hand for the beadle's cup ; " and a very hard-hearted
man besides."

"Hard-hearted, ma'am?" said Mr. Bumble. "Hard?" Mr.
Bumble resigned his cup without another word ; squeezed Mrs.
Corney's little finger as she took it ; and inflicting two open-handed
slaps upon his laced waistcoat, gave a mighty sigh, and hitched his
chair a very little morsel farther from the fire.

It was a round table ; and as Mrs. Corney and Mr. Bumble had
been sitting opposite each other, with no great space between them,
and fronting the fire, it will be seen that Mr. Bumble, in receding
from the fire, and still keeping at the table, increased the distance
between himself and Mrs. Corney ; which proceeding, some prudent
readers will doubtless be disposed to admire, and to consider an act
of great heroism on Mr, Bumble's part : he being in some sort tempted
by time, place, and opportunity, to give utterance to certain soft
nothings, which however well they may become the lips of the light
and thoughtless, do seem immeasurably beneath the dignity of judges
of the land, members of parliament, ministers of state, lord mayors,
and other great public functionaries, but more particularly beneath
the stateliness and gravity of a beadle : who (as is well known) should
be the sternest and most inflexible among them all.

Whatever were Mr. Bumble's intentions, however (and no doubt
they were of the best) : it unfortunately happened, as has been twice
before remarked, that the table was a round one ; consequently Mr.
Bumble, moving his chair by little and little, soon began to diminish
the distance between himself and the matron ; and, continuing to
travel round the outer edge of the circle, brought his chair, in time,
close to that in which the matron was seated. Indeed, the two chairs
touched ; and when they did so, Mr. Bumble stopped.

Now, if the matron had moved her chair to the right, she would
have been scorched by the fire; and if to the left, she must have
fallen into Mr. Bumble's arms ; so (being a discreet matron, and no
doubt foreseeing these consequences at a glance) she remained where
she was, and handed Mr. Bumble another cup of tea.

" Hard-hearted, Mrs. Corney ? " said Mr. Bumble, stirring his tea,
and looking up into the matron's face ; " are you hard-hearted, Mrs.
Corney?"

" Dear me ! " exclaimed the matron, " what a very curious question
from a single man. What can you want to know for, Mr. Bumble ? "

The beadle drank his tea to the last drop ; finished a piece of toast ;

Bumble on Mrs. Carney's Property. 143

whisked the cnunbs oflf his knees ; wiped his lips ; and deliberately
kissed the matron.

" Mr. Bumble ! " cried that discreet lady in a whisper ; for the
fright was so great, that she had quite lost her voice, " Mr. Bumble, I
shall sci'eam ! " Mr. Bumble made no reply ; but in a slow and digni-
fied manner, put his arm round the matron's waist.

As the lady had stated her intention of screaming, of course she
would have screamed at this additional boldness, but that the exertion
was rendered nnnecessary by a hasty knocking at the door : which
was no sooner heard, than Mr. Bumble darted, with much agility, to
the wine bottles, and began dusting them with great violence : while
the matron sharply demanded who was there. It is worthy of remark,
as a curious physic^il instance of the efficacy of a sudden surprise in
coonteracting the effects of extreme fear, that her voice had quite
recovered all its official asperity.

"If you please, mistress," said a withered old female pauper,
hideously ngly : putting her head in at the door, " Old Sally is a-going
fast."

" Well, what's that to me ? " angrily demanded the matron. " I
can't keep her alive, can I ? "

" No, no, mistress," replied the old woman, " nobody can ; she's far
beyond the reach of help. I've seen a many people die ; little babes
and gi-eat strong men ; and I know when death's a-coming, well
enough. But she's tronbled in her mind : and when the fits are not
on her, — and that's not often, for she is dying very hard, — she says
she has got something to tell, which you must hear. She'll never die
quiet till you come, mistress."

At this intelligence, the worthy Mrs. Corney muttered a variety of
invectives against old women who conldn't even die withont purposely
annoying their betters ; and, muffling herself in a thick shawl which
she hastily caught up, briefly requested Mr. Bumble to stay till she
came back, lest anything particular should occur. Bidding the
messenger walk fast, and not be all night hobbling up the stairs,
she followed her from the room with a very ill grace, scolding all
the way,

Mr. Bumble's conduct on being left to himself, was rather inex-
plicable. He opened the closet, counted the teaspoons, weighed the
sugar-tongs, closely inspected a silver milk-pot to ascertain that it
was of the genuine metal, and, having satisfied his curiosity on these
points, put on his cocked hat corner-wise, and danced with much
gravity four distinct times round the table. Having gone through
this very extraordinary performance, he took off the cocked hat again,
and, spreading himself before the fire with his back towards it, seemed
to be mentally engaged in taking an exact inventory of the furniture.

CHAPTEE XXIV.

TREATS OF A VERY POOR SUBJECT. BUT 18 A SHORT ONE, AND MAY BB
FOUND OP IMPORTANCE IN THIS HISTORY.

It was no nnfit messenger of death, who had disturbed the quiet of
the matron's room. Her body was bent by age ; her limbs trembled
with palsy ; her face, distorted into a mumbling leer, resembled more
the grotesque shaping of some wild pencil, than the work of Nature's
hand.

Alas ! How few of Nature's faces are left alone to gladden us with
their beauty ! The cares, and sorrows, and hungerings, of the world,
change them as they change hearts ; and it is only when those passions
sleep, and have lost their hold for ever, that the troubled clouds pass
off, and leave Heaven's surface clear. It is a common thing for the
countenances of the dead, even in that fixed and rigid state, to subside
into the long-forgotten expression of sleeping infancy, and settle into
the very look of early life ; so calm, so peaceful, do they grow again,
that those who knew them in their happy childhood, kneel by the
coffin's side in awe, and see the Angel even upon earth.

The old crone tottered along the passages, and up the stairs, mutter-
ing some indistinct answers to the chidings of her companion ; being
at length compelled to pause for breath, she gave the light into her
hand, and remained behind to follow as she might : while the more
nimble superior made her way to the room where the sick woman lay.

It was a bare garret-room, with a dim light burning at the farther
end. There was another old woman watching by the bed ; the parish
apothecary's apprentice was standing by the fire, making a toothpick
out of a quill.

" Cold night, Mrs. Corney," said this young gentleman, as the
matron entered.

"Very cold, indeed, sir," replied the mistress, in her most civil
tones, and dropping a curtsey as she spoke.

"You should get better coals out of your contractors," said the
apothecary's deputy, breaking a lump on the top of the fire with the
rusty poker ; " these are not at all the sort of thing for a cold night."

" They're the board's choosing, sir," returned the matron. " The
least they could do, would be to keep us pretty warm : for our places
are hard enough."

The conversation was here interrupted by a moan from the sick
woman.

" Oh ! " said the young man, turning his face towards the bed, as
if he had previously quite forgotten the patient, " it's all U. P. there,
Mrs. Corney."

" It is, is it, sir ? " asked the matron.

tVafc/i^rs at a Death-bed. t45

"If she lasts a couple of hours, I shall bo surprised," said tho
flpothocary's apprentice, intent upon the toothpick's point. "It's a
break-up of the system altogether. Is she dozing, old lady ? "

The attendant stooped over the bed, to ascertain ; and nodded in
the affirmative.

" Then perhaps she'll go off in that way, if you don't make a row,"
said the young man. " Put the light on the floor. She won't see it
there."

The attendant did as she was told : shaking her head meanwhile,
to intimate that the woman would not die so easily ; having done so,
she resumed her seat by the side of the other nurse, who had by this
time returned. The mistress, with an expression of impatience,
wrapped herself in her shawl, and sat at the foot of the bed.

The apothecary's apprentice, having completed the manufacture of
the toothpick, planted himself in front of the fire and made good use
of it for ten minutes or so : when apparently growing rather dull, he
wished Mrs. Corney joy of her job, and took himself off on tiptoe.

When they had sat in silence for some time, the two old women
rose from the bed, and crouching over the fire, held out their withered
hands to catch the heat. The flame threw a ghastly light on their
shrivelled faces, and made their ugliness appear terrible, as, in this
position, they began to converse in a low voice.

" Did she say any more, Anny dear, while I was gone ? " inquired
the messenger.

" Not a word," replied the other. " She plucked and tore at her
arms for a little time ; but I held her hands, and she soon dropped
off. She hasn't much strength in her, so I easily kept her quiet. I
ain't so weak for an old woman, although I am on parish allowance ;
no, no ! "

" Did she drink the hot wine the doctor said she was to have ? "
demanded the first.

" I tried to get it down," rejoined the other. " But her teeth were
tight set, and she clenched the mug so hai-d that it was as much as 1
could do to get it back again. So I drank it ; and it did me good ! "

Looking cautiously round, to ascertain that they were not overheard,
the two hags cowered nearer to the fire, and chuckled heartily.

" I mind the time," said the first speaker, " when she wotdd have
done the same, and made rare fun of it afterwards."

" Ay, that she would," rejoined the other ; " she had a merry heart.
A many, many, beautiful corpses she laid out, as nice and neat as wax-
work. My old eyes have seen them — ay, and those old hands touched
them too ; for I have helped her, scores of times."

Stretching forth her trembling fingers as she spoke, the old creature
shook them exultingly before her face, and fumbling in her pocket,
brought out an old time-discoloured tin snuff-box, from which she
shook a few grains into the outstretched palm of her companion, and
a few more into her ovnx. AYhile they were thus employed, the matron,

L

146 Oliver Twist.

who Lad been impatiently watching until the dying woman shoidd
awaken from her stupor, joined them by the fire, and sharply asked
how long she was to wait ?

" Not long, mistress," replied the second woman, looking up into
her face. " We have none of us long to wait for Death. Patience,
patience ! He'll be here soon enough for us all."

" Hold your tongue, you doting idiot ! " said the matron, sternly.
" You, Martha, tell me ; has she been in this Vr'ay before ? "

" Often," answered the first woman.

" But will never be again," added the second one ; " that is, she'll
never wake again but once — and mind, mistress, that won't be for
long ! "

" Long or short," said the matron, snappishly, " she won't find mo
here when she does wake ; take care, both of you, how you worry me
again for nothing. It's no part of my duty to see all the old women
in the house die, and I won't — that's more. Mind that, you impudent
old harridans. If you make a fool of me again, I'll soon cure you, I
warrant you ! "

She was bouncing away, when a cry from the two women, who had
turned towards the bed, caused her to look round. The patient had
raised herself upright, and was stretching her arms towards them.

" Who's that ? " she cried, in a hollow voice.

" Hush, hush ! " said one of the women, stooping over her. " Lio
down, lie down ! "

" I'll never lie down again alive ! " said the woman, struggling. " I
will tell her ! Come here ! Nearer ! Let me whisper in your ear."

She clutched the matron by the arm, and forcing her into a chair
by the bedside, was about to speak, when looking round, she caught
sight of the two old women bending forward in the attitude of eager
listeners.

" Turn them away," said the woman, drowsily ; " make haste ! mate
haste ! "

The two old crones, chiming in together, began pouring out many
piteous lamentations that the poor dear was too far gone to know her
best friends ; and were uttering sundry protestations that they would
never leave her, when the superior pushed them from the room, closed
the door, and returned to the bedside. On being excluded, the old
ladies changed their tone, and cried through the keyhole that old
Sally was drunk ; which, indeed, was not unlikely ; since, in addition
to a moderate dose of opium prescribed by the apothecary, she was
labouring imder the effects of a final taste of gin-and-water which had
been privily administered, in the openness of their hearts, by the worthy
old ladies themselves.

*' Now listen to me," said the dying woman aloud, as if making a
great effort to revive one latent spark of energy. " In this very room
—in this very bed — I once nursed a pretty young creetur', that was
broaght into the house vrith her feet cut and bruised with walking,

A DcatJi-bed Confession. 147

and all soiled with dust and blood. She gave birth to a boy, and died.
Let me think — what was the year again ! "

" Never mind the year," said the impatient auditor ; " what about
her?"

" Ay," murmured the sick woman, relapsing into her former drowsy
state, " what about her ?— what about — I know ! " she cried, jumping
fiercely up : her face flushed, and her eyes starting from her head —
" I robbed her, so I did ! She wasn't cold — I tell you she wasn't cold,
when I stole it ! "

" Stole what, for God's sake ? " cried the matron, with a gesture as
if she would call for help.

" It ! " replied the woman, laying her hand over the other's month.
" The only thing she had. She wanted clothes to keep her warm,
and food to eat ; but she had kept it safe, and had it in her bosom.
It was gold, I tell you ! Eich gold, that might have saved her life I "

" Gold I " echoed the matron, bending eagerly over the woman as
she fell back. " Go on, go on — yes — what of it ? Who was the
mother ? When was it ? "

" She charged me to keep it safe," replied the woman with a groan,
" and trusted me as the only woman about her. I stole it in my heart
when she first showed it mo hanging round her neck ; and the child's
death, perhaps, is on me besides! They would have treated him
better, Lf they had known it all ! "

" Known what ? " asked the other. " Speak ! "

" The boy grew so like his mother," said the woman, rambling on,
and not heeding the question, " that I could never forget it when I
saw his face. Poor girl ! poor girl ! She was so young, too 1 Such
a gentle lamb 1 Wait ; there's more to tell. I have not told you all,
have I?"

" No, no," replied the matron, inclining her head to catch the words,
as they came more faintly from the dying woman. " Be quick, or it
may be too late ! "

" The mother," said the woman, making a more violent efi'ort than
before ; " the mother, when the pains of death first came upon her,
whispered in my ear that if her baby was born alive, and thrived, the
day might come when it would not feel so much disgraced to hear its
poor young mother named. ' And oh, kind Heaven ! ' she said, folding
her thin hands together, ' whether it be boy or gu-l, raise up some
friends for it in this troubled world, and take pity upon a lonely
desolate child, abandoned to its mercy ! ' "

" The boy's name ? " demanded the matron.

" They called him Oliver," replied the woman, feebly. " The gold
I stole was "

" Yes, yes — what ? " cried the other.

She was bending eagerly over the woman to hear her reply ; but
drew back, instinctively, as she once again rose, slowly and stiffly, mio
a sitting posture; then, clutching the coverlid with both hajids.

X48 Oliver Twist.

muttered some indistinct sounds in her throat, and fell lifeless on
tlio bed.

»**•♦**

" Stone dead 1 " said one of the old women, hurrying in as soon as
the door was opened.

" And nothing to tell, after all," rejoined the matron, walking care-
lessly away.

The two crones, to all appearance, too busily occupied in the pre-
parations for their dreadful duties to make any reply, were left alone,
hovering about the body.

CHAPTEE XXV.

WHEREIN THIS HI8T0EY REVEBTS TO MR. FAGIN AND COMPANY.

While these things were passing in the country workhouse, Mr. Fagin
sat in the old den — the same from which Oliver had been removed by
the girl — brooding over a dull, smoky fire. He held a pair of bellows
upon his knee, with which he had apparently been endeavouring to
rouse it into more cheerful action ; but he had fallen into deep
thought ; and with his arms folded on them, and his chin resting on
lis thumbs, fixed his eyes, abstractedly, on the rusty bars.

At a table behind him sat the Artful Dodger, Master Charles Bates,
and Mr. Chitling : all intent upon a game of whist ; the Artful taking
dummy against Master Bates and Mr. Chitling. The countenance of
the first-named gentleman, peculiarly intelligent at all times, acquired
great additional interest from his close observance of the game, and
his attentive perusal of Mr. Chitling's hand ; upon which, from time
to time, as occasion served, he bestowed a variety of earnest glances :
wisely regulating his own play by the result of his observations upon
his neighbour's cards. It being a cold night, the Dodger wore his
hat, as, indeed, was often his custom within doors. He also sustained
a clay pipe between his teeth, which he only removed for a brief space
when he deemed it necessary to apply for refreshment to a quart pot
upon the table, which stood ready filled with gin-and-water for the
accommodation of the company.

Master Bates was also attentive to the play ; but being of a more
excitable nature than his accomplished friend, it was observable that he
more frequently applied himself to the gin-and-water, and moreover
indulged in many jests and irrelevant remarks, all highly unbecoming
a scientific rubber. Indeed, the Artful, presuming upon their close
attachment, more than once took occasion to reason gravely with his
companion up(m these improprieties : all of which remonstrances,
Master Bates received in extremely good part ; merely requesting hia

A Quiet Rubber. 149

friend to be " blowed," or to insert his head in a sack, or replying
with some other neatly-tiimed witticism of a similar kind, the happy
application of which, excited considerable admiration in the mind of
Mr. Chitling. It was remarkable that the latter gentleman and his
partner invariably lost ; and that the circumstance, so far from angering
Master Bates, appeared to afford him the highest amusement, inasmuch
as he laughed most uproariously at the end of every deal, and pro-
tested that he had never seen such a jolly game in all his born days.

" That's two doubles and the rub," said Mr. Chitling, with a very
long face, as he drew half-a-crown from his waistcoat-pocket. "I
never see such a feller as you. Jack ; you win everything. Even
when we've good cards, Charley and I can't make nothing of 'em."

Either the matter or the manner of this remark, which was made
very ruefully, delighted Charley Bates so much, that his consequent
shout of laughter roused the Jew from his reverie, and induced him
to inquire what was the matter.

" Matter, Fagin ! " cried Charley. " I wish you had watched the
play. Tommy Chitling hasn't won a point ; and I went partners with
him against the Artful and dum."

" Ay, ay ! " said the Jew, with a grin, which sufficiently demon-
strated that he was at no loss to understand the reason. " Try 'em
again, Tom ; try 'em again."

" No more of it for me, thankee, Fagin," replied Mr. Chitling ;
" I've had enough. That 'ere Dodger has such a run of luck that there's
no standing again' him."

" Ha ! ha ! my dear," replied the Jew, " you must get up very early
in the morning, to win against the Dodger."

" Morning ! " said Charley Bates ; " you must put your boots on
over-night, and have a telescope at each eye, and a opera-glass
between your shoulders, if you want to come over AtT/i."

Mr. Dawkins received these handsome compliments with much
philosophy, and oflfered to cut any gentleman in company, for the first
picture-card, at a shilling a time. Nobody accepting the challenge,
and his pipe being by this time smoked out, he proceeded to amuse
himself by sketching a ground-plan of Newgate on the table with the
piece of chalk which had served him in lieu of counters ; whistling,
meantime, with peculiar shrillness.

" How precious dull you are. Tommy ! " said the Dodger, stopping
short when there had been a long silence; and addressing Mr.
Chitling. " What do you think he's thinking of, Fagin ? "

" How should I know, my dear ? " replied the Jew, looking round
as he plied the bellows. " About his losses, maybe ; or the little
retirement in the country that he's just left, eh ? Ha ! ha ! Is that
it, my dear ? "

" Not a bit of it," replied the Dodger, stopping the subject of dis-
course as Mr. Chitling was about to reply. "What do you say,
Charley?"

1^0 Oliver Twist.

" I should say," replied Master Bates, with a grin, " that he was
uncommon sweet upon Betsy. See how he's a-blushiug! Oh, my
eyo ! here's a merry-go-rounder ! Tommy Chitling's in love ! Oh,
Fagin, Fagin ! what a spree ! "

Thoroughly overpowered with the notion of Mr. Chitling being the
victim of the tender passion. Master Bates threw himself back in his
chair with such violence, that he lost his balance, and pitched over
upon the floor ; where (the accident abating nothing of his merriment)
he lay at full length until his laugh was over, when he resumed his
former position, and began another laugh.

" Never mind him, my dear," said the Jew, winking at Mr. Dawkins,
and giving Master Bates a reproving tap with the nozzle of the
bellows. " Betsy's a fine girl. Stick up to her, Tom. Stick up to her."

" What I mean to say, Fagin," replied Mr. Chitling, very red in
the face, " is, that that isn't anything to anybody here."

" No more it is," replied the Jew ; " Charley will talk. Don't mind
him, my dear ; don't mind him. Betsy's a fine girl. Do as she bids
you, Tom, and you will make your fortune."

' So I do do as she bids me," replied Mr. Chitling ; " I shouldn't
have been milled, if it hadn't been for her advice. But it turned out
a good job for you ; didn't it, Fagin ! And what's six weeks of it ?
It must come, some time or another, and why not in the winter time
when you don't want to go out a-walking so much ; eh, Fagin ? "

" Ah, to be sure, my dear," replied the Jew.

" You wouldn't mind it again, Tom, would you," asked the Dodger^,
winking upon Charley and the Jew, " if Bet was all right ? "

" I mean to say that I shouldn't," replied Tom, angrily. " There,
now. Ah ! Who'll say as much as that, I should like to know ; eh,
Fagin ? "

" Nobody, my dear," replied the Jew ; " not a soul, Tom. I don't
know one of 'em that would do it besides you ; not one of 'cm, my
dear."

"I might have got clear off, if I'd split upon her; mightn't I,
Fagin ? " angrily pursued the poor half-witted dupe. " A word from
me would have done it ; wouldn't it, Fagin ? "

" To be sure it would, my dear," replied the Jew.

" But I didn't blab it ; did I, Fagin ? " demanded Tom, pouring
question upon question with great volubility.

" No, no, to be sure," rej)licd the Jew ; " you were too stout-heartol
for that. A deal too stout, my dear ! "

" Perhaps I was," rejoined Tom, looking round ; " and if I was,
what's to laugh at, in that ; eh, Fagin ? "

The Jew, perceiving that Mr. Chitling was considerably roused,
hastened to assure him that nobody was laughing ; and to prove the
gravity of the company, appealed to Master Bates, the principal
oflFender. But, unfortunately, Charley, in opening his mouth to reply
that he was never more serious in his life, was unable to prevent the

Someone at the Door-bell. 151

escape of such a violent roar, that the abused Mr. Chitling, without
any preliminary ceremonies, nishcd across the room and aimed a blow
at the offender; who, being skilful in evading pursuit, ducked to
avoid it, and chose his time so well that it lighted on the chest of the
merry old gentleman, and caused him to stagger to the wall, where he
stood panting for breath, while Mr. Chitling looked on in intense
dismay.

" Hark ! " cried the Dodger at this moment, " I heard the tinkler."
Catching up the light, he crept softly up-stairs.

The bell was rung again, with some impatience, while the party
were in darkness. After a short pause, the Dodger reappeared, and
whispered Fagin mysteriously.

« What ! " cried the Jew, " alone ? "

The Dodger nodded in the affirmative, and, shading the flame of the
candle with his hand, gave Charley Bates a private intimation, in
dumb show, that he had better not be funny just then. Having per-
formed this friendly office, he fixed his eyes on the Jew's face, and
awaited his directions.

The old man bit his yellow fingers, and meditated for some seconds ;
his face working with agitation the while, as if he dreaded something,
and feared to know the worst. At length he raised his head.

" Where is ho ? " he asked.

The Dodger pointed to the floor above, and made a gesture, as if to
leave the room.

"Yes," said the Jew, answering the mute inquiry; "bring him
down. Hush ! Quiet, CLarlcy ! Gently, Tom ! Scarce, scarce ! "

This brief direction to Charley Bates, and his recent antagonist,
was softly and immediately obeyed. There was no sound of their
whereabout, when the Dodger descended the stairs, bearing the light
in his hand, and followed by a man in a coarse Emock-frock ; who,
after casting a hurried glance round the room, pulled off a large
wrapper which had concealed the lower portion of his face, and dis-
closed: all haggard, unwashed, and unshorn: the features of flash
Toby Crackit.

" How are you, Faguey ? " said this worthy, ncdding to the Jew.
"Pop that shawl away in my castor. Dodger, so that I may know
where to find it when I cut ; that's the time of day ! You'll be a
fine young cracksman afore the old file now."

With these words he pulled up the smock-frock ; and, winding it
round his middle, drew a chair to the fire, and placed his feet upon
the hob.

" See there, Faguey," he said, pointing disconsolately to his top-
boots ; " not a drop of Day and Martin since you know when ; not a
bubble of blacking, by Jove ! But don't look at me in that way, man-
All in good time. I can't talk about business till I've eat and
drank ; so produce the sustainance, and let's have a quiet fill-out for
the first time these three days ! "

152 Oliver Twist.

The Jev7 motioned to the Dodger to place what eatables there were,
upon the table ; and, seating himself opposite the housebreaker, waited
his leisure.

To judge from appearances, Toby was by no means in a hurry to
open the conversation. At first, the Jew contented himself with
patiently watching his countenance, as if to gain from its expression
some clue to the intelligence he brought ; but in vain. He looked
tired and worn, but there was the same complacent repose upon his
features that they always wore: and through dirt, and beard, and
whisker, there still shone, unimpaired, the self-satisfied smirk of flash
Toby Crackit. Then, the Jew, in an agony of impatience, watched
every morsel he put into his mouth ; pacing up and down the room,
meanwhile, in irrepressible excitement. It was all of no use. Toby
continued to eat with the utmost outward indifference, until he could
eat no more; then, ordering the Dodger out, he closed the door,
mixed a glass of spirits and water, and composed himself for talking.

" First and foremost, Faguey," said Toby.

" Yes, yes ! " interposed the Jew, drawing up his chair.

Mr. Crackit stopped to take a draught of spirits and water, and to
declare that the gin was excellent ; then placing his feet against the
low mantelpiece, so as to bring his boots to about the level of his eye,
he quietly resumed,

" First and foremost, Faguey," said the housebreaker, " how's
Bill?"

" What ! " screamed the Jew, starting from his seat.

" Why, you don't mean to say " began Toby, turning pale.

" Mean ! " cried the Jew, stamping furiously on the ground.
*' Where are they ? Sikes and the boy ! Where are they ? Where
have they been ? Where are they hiding ? Why have they not been
here ? "

" The crack failed," said Toby, faintly.

" I know it," replied the Jew, tearing a newspaper from his pocket
and pointing to it. " What more ? "

" They fired and hit the boy. We cut over the fields at the back,
with him between us — straight as the crow flies— through hedge and
ditch. They gave chase. Damme! the whole country was awake,
and the dogs upon us."

« The boy 1 "

" Bill had him on his back, and scudded like the wind. We stopped
to take him between us ; his head hung down, and he was cold.
They were close upon our heels ; every man for himself, and each
from the gallows ! We parted company, and left the youngster lying
in a ditch. Alive or dead, that's all I know about him."

The Jew stopped to hear no more ; but uttering a loud yell, and
twining his hands in hig hair, rushed from the room, and from the
bousQ,

CHAPTER XXVI.

IN WHICH A MYSTEBIOUS CHARAOTEB APPEAB8 UPON THE SCENE; AND
MANY THINGS, IN8EPABABLE FBOM THIS HI8T0BY, ARE DONE AND
PERFORMED.

The old man had gained the street comer, before he began to recover
the effect of Toby Crackit's intelligence. He had relaxed nothing of
his unusual speed ; but was still pressing onward, in the same wild
and disordered manner, when the sudden dashing past of a carriage :
and a boisterous cry from the foot passengers, who eifvv his danger :
drove him back upon the pavement. Avoiding, as much as was
possible, all the main streets, and skulking only through the by-ways
and alleys, he at length emerged on Snow Hill. Here he walked
even faster than before ; nor did he linger until he had again turned
into a court ; when, as if conscious that ho was now in his proper
element, he fell into his usual shuffling pace, and seemed to breathe
more freely.

Near to the spot on which Snow Hill and Holbom Hill meet, there
opens, upon the right hand as you come out of the City, a narrow and
dismal alley, leading to Saffron Hill. In its filthy shops are exposed
for sale huge bunches of second-hand silk handkerchiefs, of all sizes
and patterns; for here reside the traders who purchase them from
pickpockets. Hundreds of these handkerchiefs hang dangling from
pegs outside the windows or flaunting from the door-posts ; and the
shelves, within, are piled with them. Confined as the limits of Field
Lane are, it has its barber, its coffee-shop, its beer-shop, and its fried-
fish warehouse. It is a commercial colony of itself : the emporium of
petty larceny: visited at early morning, and setting-in of dusk, by
silent merchants, who traffic in dark back-parlours, and who go as
strangely as they come. Here, the clothesman, the shoe-vamper, and
the rag-merchant, display their goods, as sign-boards to the petty
thief ; here, stores of old iron and bones, and heaps of mildewy frag-
ments of woollen-stuff and linen, rust and rot in the grimy cellars.

It was into this place that the Jew turned. He was well known to
the sallow denizens of the lane ; for such of them as were on the look-
out to buy or sell, nodded, familiarly, as he passed along. He replied
to their salutations in the same way ; but bestowed no closer recognition
until he reached the further end of the alley ; when he stopped, to
address a salesman of small stature, who had squeezed as much of his
person into a child's chair as the chair would hold, and was smoking
a pipe at his warehouse door.

" Why, the sight of you, Mr. Fagin, would cure the hoptalmy ! "
said this respectable trftder, in acknowledgment of the Jew's in^uirj
ftfter his he^th*

154

Oliver Twist.

"Tho neighbourhood was a little too hot, Lively," said Fagin,
elevating his eyebrows, and crossing his hands upon his shoulders.

"Well, I've heard that complaint of it, once or twice before,"
replied the trader; "but it soon cools down again; don't you find

it so?"

Fa<nn nodded in the affirmative. Pointing in the direction of
Saffron Hill, he inquired whether any one was up yonder to-night.

" At the Cripples ? " inquired the man.

The Jew nodded.

"Let me see," pursued the merchant, reflecting. "Yes, there's
some half-dozen of 'em gone in, that I knows. I don't think your
friend's there."

" Sikes is not, I suppose ? " inquired the Jew, with a disappointed
countenance.

" iVoJi istwentus, as the lawyers say," replied the little man, shaking
his head, and looking amazingly sly. " Have you got anything in my
line to-night ? "

" Nothing to-night," said the Jew, turning away.

" Are you going up to the Cripples, Fagin ? " cried the little man,
calling after him. " Stop ! I don't mind if I have a drop there with
you!"

But as the Jew, looking back, waved his hand to intimate that he
preferred being alone ; and, moreover, as the little man could not
very easily disengage himself from the chair ; the sign of the Cripples
was, for a time, bereft of the advantage of Mr. Lively's presence. By
the time ho had got upon his legs, the Jew had disappeared ; so Mr.
Lively, after ineffectually standing on tiptoe, in the hope of catching
sight of him, again forced himself into the little chair, and, exchanging
a shake of the head with a lady in the opposite shop, in which doubt
and mistrust were plainly mingled, resumed his pipe with a grave
demeanour.

The Three Cripples, or rather the Cripples : which was the sign by
which the establishment was familiarly known to its patrons : was the
public-house in which Mr. Sikes and his dog have already figured.
Merely making a sign to a man at the bar, Fagin walked straight
up-stairs, and opening the door of a room, and softly insinuating
himself into the chamber, looked anxiously about : shading his eyes
with his hand, as if in search of some particular person.

The room was illuminated by two gas-lights ; the glare of which
was prevented by the barred shutters, and closely-drawn curtains of
faded red, from being visible outside. The ceiling was blackened, to
prevent its colour from being injured by the flaring of the lamps ; and
the place was so full of dense tobacco smoke, that at first it was
scarcely possible to discern anything more. By degrees, however, as
some of it cleared away through the open door, an assemblage of
heads, as confused as the noises that greeted the ear, might be made
out ; and as the eye grew more accustomed to the scene, the spectator

Fagin among his Devoted Servants. 155

gradually became aware of the presence of a numerous company, male
and female, ci'owded round a long table : at the upper end of which,
sat a chairman with a hammer of office in his hand ; while a pro-
fessional gentleman, with a bluish nose, and his face tied up for the
benefit of a toothache, presided at a jingling piano in a remote corner.

As Fagin stepped softly in, the professional gentleman, running
over the keys by way of prelude, occasioned a general cry of order for
a song ; which, having subsided, a young lady proceeded to entertain
the company with a ballad in four verses, between each of which the
accompanyist played the melody all through, as loud as he conld.
When this was over, the chairman gave a sentiment, after which, the
professional gentlemen on the chairman's right and left volunteered a
duet, and sang it, with great applause.

• It was curious to observe some faces which stood ont prominently
from among the group. There was the chairman himself, (the land-
lord of the house,) a coarse, rough, heavy built fellow, who, while the
songs were proceeding, rolled his eyes hither and thither, and, seeming
to give himself up to joviality, had an eye for everything that was
done, and an ear for everything that was said — and sharp ones, too.
Near him were the singers : receiving, with professional indifference,
the compliments of the company, and applying themselves, in turn, to
a dozen proffered glasses of spii-its and water, tendered by their more
boisterous admirers ; whose countenances, expressive of almost every
vice in almost every grade, irresistibly attracted the attention, by their
very repulsiveness. Cunning, ferocity, and drunkenness in all its
stages, were there, in their strongest aspects ; and women : some
with the last lingering tinge of their early freshness almost fading
as you looked : others with every mark and stamp of their sex utterly
beaten out, and presenting but one loathsome blank of profligacy and
crime ; some mere girls, others but young women, and none past the
pnme of life ; formed the darkest and saddest portion of this dreary
picture.

Fagin, troubled by no grave emotions, looked eagerly from face to
face while these proceedings were in progress ; but apparently without
meeting that of which he was in search. Succeeding, at length, in
catching the eye of the man Avho occupied the chair, he beckoned to
him slightly, and left the room, as quietly as he had entered it.

" What can I do for you, Mr. Fagin ? " inquired the man, as ho
followed him ont to the landing. " Won't you join us ? They'll be
delighted, every one of 'em."

The Jew shook his head impatiently, and said in a whisper, " Is lie
here?"

" No," replied the man.

" And no news of Barney ? " inquired Fagin.

" None," replied the landlord of the Cripples ; for it was he. " He
won't stir till it's all safe. Depend on it, they're on the scent down
there ; and that if he moved, he'd blow upon the thing at once. He's

1^6 Oliver Twist.

all right enough, Barney is, else I should have heard of him. I'll
pound it, that Barney's managing properly. Let him alone for that."

" Will he be here to-night ? " asked the Jew, laying the same
emphasis on the pronoun as before.

" Monks, do you mean ? " inquii'ed the landlord, hesitating.

« Hush ! " said the Jew. « Yes."

" Certain," replied the man, drawing a gold watch from his fob ;
" I expected him here before now. If you'll wait ten minutes, he'll
be "

" No, no," said the Jew, hastily ; as though, however desirous he
might be to see the person in question, he was nevertheless relieved
by his absence. " Tell him I came here to see him ; and that he
must come to me to-night. No, say to-morrow. As he is not here,
to-morrow will be time enough."

" Good ! " said the man. " Nothing more ? "

" Not a word now," said the Jew, descending the stairs.

" I say," said the other, looking over the rails, and speaking in a
hoarse whisper ; " what a time this would be for a seU ! I've got
Phil Barker here : so drunk, that a boy might take him."

" Ah ! But it's not Phil Barker's time," said the Jew, looking up.
" Phil has something more to do, before we can afford to part with
him ; so go back to the company, my dear, and tell them to lead merry
lives — xcihile they last. Ha ! ha ! ha ! "

The landlord reciprocated the old man's laugh ; and returned to
his guests. The Jew was no sooner alone, than his countenance
resumed its former expression of anxiety and thought. After a brief
reflection, he called a hack cabriolet, and bade the man drive towards
Bethnal Green. He dismissed him within some quarter of a mile of
Mr. Sikes's residence, and performed the short remainder of the
distance, on foot.

" Now," muttered the Jew, as he knocked at the door, " if there is
any deep play here, I shall have it out of you, my girl, cunning as
you are."

She was in her room, the woman said. Fagin crept softly up-
stairs, and entered it without any previous ceremony. The girl was
alone ; lying with her head upon the table, and her haii* straggling
over it.

" She has been di-inking," thought the Jew, coolly, " or perhaps she
is only miserable."

The old man turned to close the door, as he made this reflection ;
the noise thus occasioned, roused the girl. She eyed his crafty face
n.irrowly, as she inquired whether there was any news, and as she
listened to his recital of Toby Crackit's story. When it was con-
cluded, she sank into her former attitude, but spoke not a word. She
pushed the candle impatiently away ; and once or twice as she
feverishly changed her position, shuffled her feet upon the ground j
but this was all,

Nancy and Fagin. 157

During the silence, the Jew looked restlessly about the room, as if
to assure himself that there were no appearances of Sikes having
covertly returned. Apparently satisfied with his inspection, he
coughed twice or thrice, and made as many efforts to open a conversa-
tion ; but the girl heeded him no more than if he had been made of
Btone. At length he made another attempt ; and rubbing his hands
together, said, in his most ^nciliatory tone,

" And where should you think Bill was now, my dear ? "

The girl moaned out some half intelligible reply, that she could not
tell ; and seemed, from the smothered noise that escaped her, to be
crying.

" And the boy, too," said the Jew, straining his eyes to catch a
glimpse of her face. " Poor leetle child ! Left in a ditch, Nance ; only
think 1 "

" The child," said the girl, suddenly looking up, " is better where
he is, than among us ; and if no harm comes to Bill from it, I hope
he lies dead in the ditch, and that his young bones may rot there."

" What ! " cried the Jew, in amazement.

" Ay, I do," retui'ned the girl, meeting his gaze. " I shall be glad
to have him away from my eyes, and to know that the worst is over.
I can't bear to have him about me. The sight of him turns me against
myself, and all of you."

" Pooh ! " said the Jew, scornfully. " You're drunk."

" Am I ? " cried the girl, bitterly. " It's no fault of yours, if I am
not ! You'd never have me anything else, if you had your will, except
now ; — the h amour doesn't suit you, doesn't it ? "

" No I " rejoined the Jew, furiously. " It does not."

*' Change it, then ! " responded the girl, with a laugh.

" Change it ! " exclaimed the Jew, exasperated beyond all bounds
by his companion's unexpected obstinacy, and the vexation of the
night, " I WILL change it ! Listen to me, you drab. Listen to me,
who with six words, can strangle Sikes as surely as if I had his bull's
throat between my fingers now. If he comes back, and leaves the
boy behind him ; if he gets off free, and dead or alive, fails to restore
him to me ; murder him yourself if you would have him escape Jack
Ketch. And do it the moment he sets foot in this room, or mind me,
it will be too late ! "

"What is all this ? " cried the girl involuntarily.

" What is it ? " pursued Fagiu, mad with rage. " When the boy's
worth hundreds of pounds to me, am I to lose what chance threw me
in the way of getting safely, through the whims of a drunken gang
that I could whistle away the lives of ! And me bound, too, to a born
devil that only wants the will, and has the power to, to "

Panting for breath, the old man stammered for a word ; and in that
instant checked the torrent of his wrath, and changed his whole
demeanour. A moment before, his clenched hands had grasped the aii" ;
his eyes had dilated ; and his face grown livid with passion ; but now.

158 Oliver Twist.

he shi-unk into a chair, and, cowering together, tremblecl with the ap=
prehension of having himself disclosed some hidden villainy. After
a short silence, ho ventured to look round at his companion. He
appeared somewhat reassured, on beholding her in the same listless
attitude from which he had first roused her.

" Nancy, dear ! " croaked the Jew, in his usual voice. " Did you
mind me, dear ? " . ^ . . .

" Don't worry me now, Fagin ! " replied the girl, raising her head
languidly. " If Bill has not done it this time, he will another. He
has done many a good job for you, and will do many more when he
can ; and when he can't ho won't ; so no more about that."

" Kegarding this boy, my dear ? " said the Jew, rubbing the palms
of his hands nervously together.

" The boy must take his chance with the rest," interrupted Nancy,
hastily ; " and I say again, I hope he is dead, and out of harm's way,
and out of yours, — that is, if Bill comes to no harm. And if Toby
got clear off, Bill's pretty sure to be safe; for Bill's worth two of
Toby any time."

"And about what I was saying, my dear?" observed the Jew,
keeping his glistening eye steadily upon her.

" Yon must say it all over again, if it's anything you want me to
do," rejoined Nancy ; " and if it is, you had better wait till to-morrow.
You put me up for a minute ; but now I'm stupid again."

Fagin put several other questions : all with the same drift of ascer-
taining whether the girl had profited by his unguarded hints ; but,
she answered them so readily, and was withal so utterly unmoved by his
searching looks, that his original impression of her being more than
a trifle in liquor, was confirmed. Nancy, indeed, was not exempt
from a failing which was very common among the Jew's female
pupils ; and in which, in their tenderer years, they were rather
encouraged than checked. Her disordered appearance, and a whole-
sale perfume of Geneva which pervaded the apartment, afforded strong
confii-matory evidence of the justice of the Jew's supposition ; and
when, after indulging in the temporary display of violence above
described, she subsided, first into dulness, and afterwards into a com-
pound of feelings : under the influence of which she shed tears one
minute, and in the next gave utterance to various exclamations of
" Never say die ! " and divers calculations as to what might be the
amount of the odds so long as a lady or gentleman was happy, Mr.
Fagin, who had had considerable experience of such matters in his
time, saw, with great satisfaction, that she was very far gone indeed.

Having eased his mind by this discovery ; and having accomplished
his twofold object of imparting to the girl what he had, that night,
heard, and of ascertaining, with his own eyes, that Sikes had not
returned, Mr. Fagin again turned his face homeward : leaving his
young friend asleep, with her head upon the table.

It was within an hour of midnight. The weather being dark, and

Monks. 159

piercing cold, lie had no great temptation to loiter. The sharp wind
that scoured the streets, seemed to have cleared them of passengers,
as of dust and mud, for few people were ahroad, and they were to all
appearance hastening fast home. It hlew from the right quarter for
the Jew, however, and straight before it he wont : trembling, and
Bhivering, as every fresh gust drove him rudely on his way.

He had reached the corner of his o-rtq street, and was already
fumbling in his pocket for the door-key, when a dark figure emerged
from a projecting entrance which lay in deep shadow, and, crossing
the road, glided up to him unperceived.

*' Fagin ! " whispered a voice close to his ear.

" Ah ! " said the Jew, turning quickly round, " is that "

" Yes ! " interrupted the stranger. " I have been lingering here
these two hours. "Where the devil have you been ? "

" On your business, my dear," replied the Jew, glancing uneasily at
his companion, and slackening his pace as he spoke. "On your
business all night."

" Oh, of course ! " said the stranger, with a sneer. " Well ; and
what's come of it ? "

" Nothing good," said the Jew.

" Nothing bad, I hope ? " said the stranger, stopping short, and
turning a startled look on his companion.

The Jew shook his head, and was about to reply, when the stranger,
interrupting him, motioned to the house, before which they had by
this time arrived : remarking, that he had better say what he had got
to say, under cover : for his blood was chilled with standing about so
long, and the wind blew through him.

Fagin looked as if he could have willingly excused himself from
taking home a visitor at that imseasonable hour ; and, indeed, muttered
something about having no fire ; but his companion repeating his
request in a peremptory manner, he unlocked the door, and requested
him to close it softly, while he got a light.

" It's as dark as the grave," said the man, groping forward a few
steps. " Make haste ! "

"Shut the door," whispered Fagin from the end of the passage.
As he spoke, it closed with a loud noise.

" That wasn't my doing," said the other man, feeling his way.
" The wind blew it to, or it shut of its own accord : one or the other.
Look sharp with the light, or I shall knock my brains out against
something in this confounded hole."

Fagin stealthily descended the kitchen stairs. After a short
absence, he returned with a lighted candle, and the intelligence that
Toby Crackit was asleep in the back room below, and that the boys
were in the front one. Beckoning the man to follow him, he led the
way up-stairs.

" We can say the few words we've got to say in here, my dear,"
6aid the Jew, throwing open a door on the first floor ; " and as there

i6o Oliver Twist.

are holes in the shtitterg, and we never show lights to our neighbours,
we'll set the candle on the stairs. There ! "

With those words, the Jew, stooping down, placed the candle on an
upper flight of stairs, exactly opposite to the room door. This done,
he led the way into the apartment ; which was destitute of all move-
ables save a broken arm-chair, and an old couch or sofa without
covering, which stood behind the door. Upon this piece of furniture,
the stranger sat himself with the air of a weary man ; and the Jew,
drawing up the arm-chair opposite, they sat face to face. It was not
quite dark ; the door was partially open ; and the candle outside, threw
a feeble reflection on the opposite wall.

They conversed for some time in whispers. Though nothing of the
conversation was distinguishable beyond a few disjointed words here
and there, a listener might easily have perceived that Fagin appeared
to be defending himself against some remarks of the stranger ; and
that the latter was in a state of considerable irritation. They might
have been talking, thus, for a quarter of an hour or more, when
Monks — by which name the Jew had designated the strange man
several times in the course of their colloquy — said, raising his voice
a little,

" I tell you again, it was badly planned. Why not have kept him
here among the rest, and made a sneaking, snivelling pickpocket of
him at once ? "

" Only hear him ! " exclaimed the Jew, shrugging his shoulders.

" Why, do you mean to say you couldn't have done it, if you had
chosen?" demanded Monks, sternly. "Haven't you done it, with
other boys, scores of times ? If you had had patience for a twelve-
month, at most, couldn't you have got him convicted, and sent safely
out of the kingdom ; perhaps for life ? "

" Whose turn would that have served, my dear ? " inquired the Jew
humbly.

" Mine," replied Monks.

"But not mine," said the Jew, submissively. "He might have
become of use to me. When there are two parties to a bargain, it is
only reasonable that the interests of both should be consulted ; is it,
my good friend ? "

" What then ? " demanded Monks.

" I saw it was not easy to train him to the business," replied the
Jew ; " he was not like other boys in the same circumstances."

" Curse him, no ! " muttered the man, " or he would have been a
thief, long ago."

" I had no hold upon him to make him worse," pursued the Jew,
anxiously watching the countenance of his companion. " His hand
was not in. I had nothing to frighten him with ; which we always
must have in the beginning, or we labour in vain. What could I do ?
Send him out with the Dodger and Charley ? We had enough of that,
at first, my dear ; I trembled for us all."

A Fancy or a Ghost ^ t6l

" Tliai was not my doing," observed Monks.

" No, no, my dear ! " renewed the Jew. " And I don't quarrel witli
it now; because, if it had never happened, you might never have
clapped eyes upon the boy to notice him, and bo led to the discovery
that it was him you were looking for. Well ! I got him back for you
by means of the girl ; and then slie begins to favour him."

" Throttle the girl ! " said Monks, impatiently.

*' Why, we can't afford to do that just now, my dear," replied the
Jew, smiling ; " and, besides, that sort of thing is not in our way ; or,
one of these days, I might be glad to have it done. I know what
these girls are, Monks, well. As soon as the boy begins to harden,
she'll care no more for him, than for a block of wood. You want him
made a thief. If he is alive, I can make him one from this time ; and
if — if — " said the Jew, drawing nearer to the other, — " it's not likely,
mind, — but if the worst comes to the worst, and he is dead "

" It's no fault of mine if he is ! " interposed the other man, with a
look of terror, and clasping the Jew's arm with trembling hands.
" Mind that. Fagin ! I had no hand in it. Anything but his death,
I told you from the first. I won't shed blood ; it's always found out,
and haunts a man besides. If they shot him dead, I was not tho
cause ; do you hear me ? Fire this infernal den ! What's that ? "

" What ! " cried the Jew, grasping the coward round the body, with
both arms, as he sprung to his feet. " Where ? "

" Yonder ! " replied the man, glaring at the opposite wall. " The
shadow ! I saw the shadow of a woman, in a cloak and bonnet, pass
along the wainscot like a breath ! "

Tho Jew released his hold, and they rushed tumultuously from the
room. The candle, wasted by the draught, was standing where it had
been placed. It showed them only the empty staircase, and their own
white faces. They listened intently: a profound silence reigned
throughout the house.

*' It's your fancy," said the Jew, taking up the light and turning to
his companion.

" I'll swear I saw it ! " replied Monks, trembling. " It was bending
forward when I saw it first ; and when I spoke, it darted away."

The Jew glanced contemptuously at the pale face of his associate,
and, telling him he could follow, if he pleased, ascended the stairs.
They looked into all the rooms; they were cold, bare, and empty.
They descended into the passage, and thence into the cellars below.
The green damp hung upon the low walls ; the tracks of the snail
and slug glistened in the light of the candle ; but all was still as death.

" What do you think now ? " said the Jew, when they had regained
the passage. " Besides ourselves, there's not a creature in the house
except Toby and the boys ; and they're safe enough. See here ! "

As c proof of the fact, the Jew drew forth two keys from his pocket ;
and explained, that when he first went down-stairs, he had locked them
in, to prevent any intrusion on the conference.

M

1 62 Oliver Twist.

This accumulated testimony eflfcctually staggered Mr. Monks. His
protestations had gradually become less and less vehement as they
proceeded in their search without making any discovery ; and, now,
he gave vent to several very grim laughs, and confessed it could only
have been his excited imagination. He declined any renewal of the
conversation, however, for that night : suddenly remembering that it
was past one o'clock. And so the amiable couple parted.

CHAPTER XXVn.

ATONES FOB THE UNPOLITENESS OF A FORMER CHAPTER ; WHICH
DESERTED A LADY, MOST UNCEREMONIOUSLY.

As it would be, by no means, seemly in a humble author to keep so
mighty a personage as a beadle waiting, with his back to the fire, and
the slarts of his coat gathered up under his arms, until such time as
it might suit his pleasure to relieve him ; and as it would still less
become his station, or his gallantry to involve in the same neglect a
lady on whom that beadle had looked with an eye of tenderness and
aflfection, and in whose ear he had whispered sweet words, which,
coming from such a quarter, might well thrill the bosom of maid or
matron of whatsoever degree ; the historian whose pen traces these
words — tnisting that he knows his place, and that he entertains a
becoming reverence for those upon earth to whom high and important
authority is delegated — hastens to pay them that respect which their
position demands, and to treat them with all that duteous ceremony
which their exalted rank, and (by consequence) great virtues, im-
peratively claim at his hands. Towards this end, indeed, he had
purposed to introduce, in this place, a dissertation touching the divine
right of beadles, and elucidative of the position, that a beadle can do
no wrong : which could not fail to have been both pleasurable and
profitable to the right-minded reader, but which he is unfortunately
compelled, by want of time and space, to postpone to some more con-
venient and fitting opportunity ; on the arrival of which, he will be
prepared to show, that a beadle properly constituted : that is to say, a
parochial beadle, attached to a parochial workhouse, and attending in
his official capacity the parochial church : is, in right and virtue of
his office, possessed of all the excellences and best qualities of
humanity ; and that io none of those excellences, can mere companies'
beadles, or court-of-law beadles, or even chapel-of-ease beadles (save
the last, and they in a very lowly and inferior degree), lay the
remotest sustainable claim.

Mr. Bumble had re-counted the teaspoons, re-weighed the sugar-
tongs, made a closer inspection of the milk-pot, and ascertained to a

Bumble further allays his Curiosity. 163

mcety the exact condition of the furniture, down to the very horse-
hair seats of the chairs ; and had repeated each process full half-a-
dozen times; before he began to think that it was time for Mrs.
Corney to return. Thinking begets thinking; as there were no
sounds of Mrs. Comey's approach, it occurred to Mr. Bumble that it
would be an innocent and virtuous way of spending the time, if he
were further to allay his curiosity by a cursory glance at the interior
of Mrs. Comey's chest of drawers.

Having listened at the keyhole, to assure himself that nobody was
approaching the chamber, Mr. Bumble, beginning at the bottom, pro-
ceeded to make himself acquainted with the contents of the three long
drawers : which, being filled with various garments of good fashion
and texture, carefully preserved between two layers of old newspapers,
speckled with dried lavender : seemed to yield him exceeding satis-
faction. Arriving, in course of time, at the right-hand corner drawer
(in which was the key), and beholding therein a small padlocked box,
which, being shaken, gave forth a pleasant sound, as of the chinking
of coin, Mr. Bumble returned with a stately walk to the fireplace ;
and, resuming his old attitude, said, with a grave and determined air,
" I'll do it ! " He followed up this remarkable declaration, by shaking
his head in a waggish manner for ten minutes, as though he were
remonstrating with himself for being such a pleasant dog ; and then,
he took a view of his legs in profile, with much seeming pleasui-e and
interest.

He was still placidly engaged in this latter survey, when Mrs.
Corney, hurrying into the room, threw herself, in a breathless state,
on a chair by the fireside, and covering her eyes with one hand, placed
the other over her heart, and gasped for breath.

" Mrs. Corney," said Mr. Bumble, stooping over the matron, " what
is this, ma'am ? Has anything happened, ma'am ? Pray answer me :
I'm on — on — " Mr. Bumble, in his alarm, could not immediately
think of the word " tenterhooks," so he said " broken bottles."

" Oh, Mr. Bumble ! " cried the lady, " I have been so dreadfully put
outl"

*' Put out, ma'am ! " exclaimed Mr. Bumble ; " who has dared
to — ? I know ! " said Mr. Bumble, checking himself, with native
majesty, " this is them wicious paupers I "

" It's dreadful to think of ! " said the lady, shuddering.

" Then Aorit think of it, ma'am," rejoined Mr. Bumble.

" I can't help it," whimpered the lady.

" Then take something, ma'am," said Mr. Bumble soothingly. " A
little of the wine ? "

" Not for the world ! " replied Mrs. Corney. " I couldn't,— oh I
The top shelf in the right-hand comer — oh ! " Uttering these words,
the good lady pointed, distractedly, to the cupboard, and underwent
a convulsion from internal spasms. Mr. Bumble rushed to the closet ;
and, snatching a pint green-glass bottle from the sheK thus in-

164 Oliver Twist.

coherently indicated, filled a tea-cup with its contents, and held it to
the lady's lips.

" I'm better now," said Mrs. Comey, falling back, after drinking
half of it.

Mr. Bumble raised his eyes piously to the ceiling in thankfulness ;
and, bringing them down again to the brim of the cup, lifted it to his
nose.

"Peppermint,*' exclaimed Mrs. Corney, in a faint voice, smiling
gently on the beftdle as she spoke. " Try it ! There's a little — a
little something else in it."

Mr. Bumble tasted the medicine with a doubtful look ; smacked his
lips ; took another taste ; and put the cup down empty.

" It's very comforting," said Mrs. Corney.

" Very much so indeed, ma'am," said the beadle. As he spoke, he
drew a chair beside the matron, and tenderly inquired what had
happened to distress her.

" Nothing," replied Mrs. Comey. " I am a foolish, excitable, weak
creetur."

" Not weak, ma'am," retorted Mr. Bumble, di-awing his chair a little
closer. " Are you a weak creetur, Mrs. Corney ? "

" We are all weak creeturs," said Mrs. Corney, laying down a
general principle.

" So we are," said the beadle.

Nothing was said on either side, for a minute or two afterwards.
By the expiration of that time, Mr. Bumble had illustrated the position
by removing his left arm from the back of Mrs. Corney's chair, where
it had previously rested, to Mrs. Corney's apron-string, round which
it gradually became entwined.

" We are all weak creeturs," said Mr. Bumble.

Mrs. Corney sighed.

" Don't sigh, Mrs. Corney," said Mr. Bumble.

" I can't help it," said Mrs. Corney. And she sighed again.

" This is a very comfortable room, ma'am," said Mr. Bumble looking
round. " Another room, and this, ma'am, would be a complete thing."

" It would be too much for one," murmured the lady.

"But not for two, ma'am," rejoined Mr. Bumble, in soft accents.
" Eh, Mrs. Comey ? "

Mrs. Corney drooped her head, when the beadle said this; the
beadle drooped his, to get a view of Mrs. Corney's face. Mrs. Comey,
with groat propriety, turned her head away, and released her hand to
get at her pocket-handkerchief; but insensibly replaced it in that of
Mr. Bumble.

" The board allow you coals, don't they, Mrs. Comey ? " inquired
the beadle, aflfectionately pressing her hand.

•* And candles," replied Mrs. Corney, slightly returning the pressure.

"Coals, candles, and house-rent free," said Mr. Bumble. "Oh,
Mi-8. Comey, what a Angel you are ! "

Bumble proposes. 165

The lady was not proof against this burst of feeling. She sank
into Mr. Bumble's arms ; and that gentleman in his agitation, im-
printed a passionate kiss upon her chaste nose.

" Such porochial perfection ! " exclaimed Mr. Bumble, raptm'ously.
" You know that Mr. Slout is worse to-night, my fascinator ? "

" Yes," replied Mrs. Comoy, bashfully.

" He can't live a week, the doctor says," pursued Mr. Bumble.
" He is the master of this establishment ; his death will cause a
wacancy: that wacancy must be filled up. Oh, Mrs. Corney, what
a prospect this opens ! What a opportunity for a jining of hearts and
housekeepings ! "

Mrs. Corney sobbed.

" The little word ? " said Mr. Bumble, bending over the bashful
beauty. " The one little, little, little word, my blessed Corney ? "

" Ye — ye — yes ! " sighed out the matron.

" One more," pursued the beadle ; " compose your darling feelings
for only one more. When is it to come off? "

Mrs. Corney twice essayed to speak : and twice failed. At length
summoning up courage, she threw her arms round Mr. Bumble's neck,
and said, it might be as soon as ever he pleased, and that he was " a
irresistible duck."

Matters being thus amicably and satisfactorily arranged, the contract
was solemnly ratified in another teacupful of the peppermint mixture ;
which was rendered the more necessary, by the flutter and agitation
of the lady's spirits. While it was being disposed of, she acquainted
Mr. Bumble with the old woman's decease.

"Very good," said that gentleman, sipping his peppermint; "I'll
call at Sowerberry's as I go home, and tell him to send to-morrow
morning. Was it that as frightened you, love ? "

" It wasn't anything particular, dear," said the lady, evasively.

" It must have been something, love," urged Mr. Bumble. " Won't
you tell your own B. ? "

"Not now," rejoined the lady; "one of these days. After we're
married, dear."

" After we're married ! " exclaimed Mr. Bumble. " It wasn't any
impudence from any of them male paupers as "

" No, no, love ! " interposed the lady, hastily.

" If I thought it was," continued Mr. Bumble ; " if I thought as
any one of 'em had dared to lift his wulgar eyes to that lovely counte-
nance "

" They wouldn't have dared to do it, love," responded the lady.

" They had better not ! " said Mr. Bumble, clenching his fist. " Let
me see any man, porochial or extra-porochial, as would presume to do
it ; and I can tell him that he wouldn't do it a second time ! "

Unembellished by any violence of gesticulation, this might have
seemed no very high compliment to the lady's charms ; but, as Mr.
Punable ^compaiiied the tljreat with many vrarlike gestures, shQ was

l66 Oliver Twist.

much touched with this proof of his devotion, and protested, wiih
great admiration, that he was indeed a dove.

The dove then turned up his coat-collar, and put on his cocked
hat ; and, having exchanged a long and affectionate embrace with his
future partner, once again braved the cold wind of the night : merely
pausing, for a few minutes, in the male paupers' ward, to abuse them
a little, with the view of satisfying himself that he could fill the office
of workhouse-master with needful acerbity. Assured of his qualifi-
cations, Mr. Bumble left the building with a light heart, and bright
visions of his future promotion : which served to occupy his mind
until he reached the shop of the undertaker.

Now, Mr. and Mrs. Sowerberry having gone out to tea and supper :
and Noah Claypole not being at any time disposed to take upon him-
self a greater amount of physical exertion than is necessary to a con-
venient performance of the two functions of eating and drinking, the
shop was not closed, although it was past the usual hour of shutting-
up. Mr. Bumble tapped with his cane on the counter several times ;
but, attracting no attention, and beholding a light shining through
the glass-Avindow of the little parlour at the back of the shop, ho made
bold to peep in and see what was going forward ; and when he saw
what was going forward, he was not a little surprised.

The cloth was laid for supper ; the table was covered with bread
and butter, plates and glasses ; a porter-pot and a wine-bottle. At
the upper end of the table, Mr. Noah Claypole lolled negligently in
an easy-chair, with his legs thrown over one of the arms : an open
clasp-knife in one hand, and a mass of buttered bread in the other.
Close beside him stood Charlotte, opening oysters from a barrel:
which Mr. Claypole condescended to swallow, with remarkable avidity.
A more than ordinary redness in the region of the young gentleman's
nose, and a kind of fixed wink in his right eye, denoted that he was in a
slight degree intoxicated ; these symptoms were confirmed by the intense
relish with which he took his oysters, for which nothing but a strong
appreciation of their cooling properties, in cases of internal fever, could
have sufficiently accounted.

"Here's a delicious fat one, Noah, dear!" said Charlotte; "try
him, do ; only this one."

" What a delicious thing is a oyster ! " remarked Mr. Claypole, after
he had swallowed it. " What a pity it is, a number of 'em should
ever make you feel uncomfortable ; isn't it, Charlotte ? "

" It's quite a cruelty," said Charlotte.

" So it is," acquiesced Mr. Claypole. " An't yer fond of oysters ? "

"Not overmuch," replied Charlotte. "I like to see you eat 'em,
Noah dear, better than eating 'em myself."

" Lor' ! " said Noah, reflectively ; " how queer ! "

" Have another," said Charlotte. " Here's one with such a beautiful,
delicate beard 1 "

" I can't manage any more," said Noah. " I'm very sorry. Come
here, Charlotte, and I'll kiss yer."

'....^/^C€a^z^4?^a^Ae^(:^^€a'i^^^ c?^^/^

Bumble scandalized^ 167

" What ! " said Mr. Bumble, bursting into the room. *' Say that
again, sir."

Charlotte uttered a scream, and hid her face in her apron. Mr.
Claypole, without making any further change in his position than
suffering his legs to reach the ground, gazed at the beadle in drunken
terror.

"Say it again, you wile, owdacious fellow!" said Mr. Bumble.
" How dare you mention such a thing, sir ? And how dare you
encourage him, you insolent minx ? Kiss her ! " exclaimed Mr.
Bumble, in strong indignation. " Faugh ! "

" I didn't mean to do it ! " said Noah, blubbering. " She's always
a-kissing of me, whether I like it, or not."

" Oh, Noah," cried Charlotte, reproachfully.

" Yer are ; yer know yer are ! " retorted Noah. " She's always
a-doin' of it, Mr. Bumble, sir ; she chucks me under the chin, please,
sir ; and makes all manner of love ! "

" Silence ! " cried Mr. Bumble, sternly. " Take yourself down-
stairs, ma'am. Noah, you shut up the shop ; say another word till
your master comes home, at your peril ; and, when he does come home,
tell him that Mr. Bumble said he was to send a old woman's shell
after breakfast to-morrow morning. Do you hear, sir ? Kissing ! "
cried Mr. Bumble, holding up his hands. " The sin and wickedness
of the lower orders in this porochial district is frightful ! If parlia-
ment don't take their abominable courses under consideration, this
country's ruined, and the character of the peasantry gone for ever ! "
"With these words, the beadle strode, with a lofty and gloomy air, from
the undertaker's premises.

And now that we have accompanied him so far on his road home,
and have made all necessary preparations for the old woman's funeral,
let us set on foot a few inquiries after young Oliver Twist, and
ascertain whether he be still lying in the ditch where Toby Crackit
left him.

CHAPTEE XXVIII.

LOOKS AFTEtt OLIVEB, AND PROCEEDS WITH HIS ADVENTUBKS.

" Wolves tear your throats ! " muttered Sikes, grinding bis teeth. *' I
wish I was among some of yoti ; you'd howl the hoarser for it."

As Sikes growled forth this imprecation, with the most desperate
ferocity that his desperate nature was capable of, he rested the body
of the wounded boy across his bended knee ; and turned his head, for
an instant, to look back at his pursuers.

There was little to be made out, in the mist and darkness ; but the

i68 Oliver Twist.

loud shouting of men vibrated through the air, and the barking of the
neighbouring dogs, roused by the sound of the alarm bell, resounded
in every direction.

" Stop, you white-livered hound ! " cried the robber, shouting after
Toby Crackit, who, making the best use of his long legs, was already
ahead. "Stop!"

The repetition of the word, brought Toby to a dead stand-still.
For he was not quite satisfied that he was beyond the range of pistol-
shot ; and Sikes was in no mood to be played with.

" Bear a hand with the boy," cried Sikes, beckoning furiously to his
confederate. " Come back ! "

Toby made a show of returning; but ventured, in a low voice,
broken for want of breath, to intimate considerable reluctance as he
came slowly along.

" Quicker ! " cried Sikes, laying the boy in a dry ditch at his feet,
and drawing a pistol from his pocket. " Don't play booty with me."

At this moment the noise grew louder. Sikes, again looking round,
could discern that the men who had given chase were already climbing
the gate of the field in which he stood ; and that a couple of dogs
were some paces in advance of them.

" It's all up, Bill ! " cried Toby ; " drop the kid, and show 'em your
heels." With this parting advice, Mr. Crackit, preferring the chance
of being shot by his friend, to the certainty of being taken by his
enemies, fairly turned tail, and darted off at full speed. Sikes clenched
his teeth ; took one look around ; threw over the prostrate form of
Oliver, the cape in which he had been hurriedly muffled ; ran along
the front of the hedge, as if to disti'act the attention of those behind,
from the spot where the boy lay ; paused, for a second, before another
hedge which met it at right angles ; and whirling his pistol high into
the air, cleared it at a bound, and was gone.

" Ho, ho, there ! " cried a tremulous voice in the rear. " Pincher !
Neptune ! Come here, come here ! "

The dogs, who, in common with their masters, seemed to have no
particular relish for the sport in which they were engaged, readUy
answered to the command. Three men, who had by this time advanced
some distance into the field, stopped to take counsel together.

" My advice, or, leastways, I should say, my orders, is," said the
fattest man of the party, " that we 'mediately go home again."

" I am agreeable to anything which is agreeable to Mr. Giles," said
a shorter man ; who was by no means of a slim figure, and who was
very pale in the face, and very polite : as frightened men frequently
are.

"I shouldn't wish to appear ill-mannered, gentlemen," said the
third, who had called the dogs back, " Mr. Giles ought to know."

" Certainly," replied the shorter man ; " and whatever Mr. Giles
Bays, it isn't our place to contradict him. No, no, I know my sitiwa-
tion ! Thank mj stars, I know mj sitiwation." To tell the truth,

IVAo's afraid? 169

the Kttle man did seem to know hie Bituation, and to know perfectly
well that it was by no means a desirable one ; for bis teeth chattered
in his head as he spoke.

" You are afraid, Brittles," said Mr. Giles.

" I an't," said Brittles.

" You are," said Giles.

" You're a falsehood, Mr. Giles," said Brittles.

« You're a lie, Brittles," said Mr. Giles.

Now, these four retorts arose from Mr. Giles's taunt; and Mr.
Giles's taunt had arisen from his indignation at having the responsi-
bility of going home again, imposed upon himself under cover of a
compliment. The third man brought the dispute to a close, most
philosophically.

" I'll tell you what it is, gentleman," said he, " we're all afraid."

" Speak for yourself, sir," said Mr. Giles, who was the palest of the
party.

" So I do," replied the man. " It's natural and proper to be afraid,
tmdor such circumstances. J am."

" So am I," said Brittles ; " only there's no call to tell a man he is,
so bounceably."

These frank admissions softened Mr. Giles, who at once owned that
lie was afraid ; upon which, they all three faced about, and ran back
again with the completest unanimity, until Mr. Giles (who had the
shortest wind of the party, and was encumbered with a pitchfork)
most handsomely insisted on stopping, to make an apology for his
hastiness of speech.

" But it's wonderful," said Mr. Giles, when he had explained, " what
a man will do, when his blood is up. I should have committed murder
— I know I should — if we'd caught one of them rascals."

As the other two were impressed with a similar presentiment ; and
as their blood, like his, had all gone down again ; some speculation
ensued upon the cause of this sudden change in their temperament.

" I know what it was," said Mr. Giles ; " it was the gate."

" I shouldn't wonder if it was," exclaimed Brittles, catching at the
idea.

" You may depend upon it," said Giles, " that that gate stopped the
flow of the excitement. I felt all mine suddenly going away, as I
was climbing over it."

By a remarkable coincidence, the other two had been visited with
the same unpleasant sensation at that precise moment. It was quite
obvious, therefore, that it was the gate ; especially as there was no
doubt regarding the time at which the change had taken place, because
all three remembered that they had come in sight of the robbers at
the instant of its occurrence.

This dialogue was held between the two men who had surprised
the burglars, and a travelling tinker who had been sleeping in an
outhouse, and who had been roused, together with bis two mongrel

I/O Oliver Tivist.

curs, to join in the pursuit. Mr. Giles acted in the double capacity
of butler and steward to the old lady of the mansion ; Brittles was a
lad of all-work : who, having entered her service a mere child, was
treated as a promising young boy still, though he was something past
thirty.

Encouraging each other with such converse as this ; but, keeping
very close together, notwithstanding, and looking apprehensively
round, whenever a fresh gust rattled through the boughs ; the three
men hurried back to a tree, behind which they had left their lantern,
lest its light should inform the thieves in what direction to fire.
Catching up the light, they made the best of their way home, at a
good round trot ; and long after their dusky forms had ceased to bo
discernible, the light might have been seen twinkling and dancing in
the distance, like some exhalation of the damp and gloomy atmosphere
through which it was swiftly borne.

The air grow colder, as day came slowly on ; and the mist rolled
along the ground like a dense cloud of smoke. The grass was wet ;
the pathways, and low places, were all mire and water ; the damp
breath of an unwholesome wind went languidly by, with a hollow
moaning. Still, Oliver lay motionless and insensible on the spot
where Sikes had left him.

Morning drew on apace. The air became more sharp and piercing,
as its first dull hue — the death of night, rather than the birth of day
— glimmered faintly in the sky. The objects which had looked dim
and terrible in the darkness, grew more and more defined, and
gradually resolved into their familiar shapes. The rain came down,
thick and fast, and pattered noisily among the leafless bushes. But,
Oliver felt it not, as it beat against him ; for he still lay stretched,
helpless and unconscious, on his bed of clay.

At length, a low cry of pain broke the stillness that prevailed ; and
uttering it, the boy awoke. His left arm, rudely bandaged in a shawl,
hung heavy and useless at his side : the bandage was saturated with
blood. He was so weak, that he could scarcely raise himself into a
sitting posture; when he had done so, he looked feebly round for
help, and groaned with pain. Trembling in every joint, from cold
and exhaustion, he made an effort to stand upright ; but, shuddering
from head to foot, fell prostrate on the ground.

After a short return of the stupor in which he had been so long
plunged, Oliver: urged by a creeping sickness at his heart, which
seemed to warn him that if he lay there, he must surely die : got upon
his feet, and essayed to walk. His head was dizzy, and ho staggered
to and fro like a drunken man. But he kept up, nevertheless, and,
with his head drooping languidly on his breast, went stumbling
onward, he knew not whither.

And now, hosts of bewildering and confused ideas came crowding
on his mind. He seemed to be still walking between Sikes and
Ci'ackit, who were angrily disputing — for the very words they said,

Oliver drops on the Doorstep — 171

sonnded in his ears ; and when he canght his ovni attention, as it
were, by making some violent effort to save himself from falling, ho
found that he was talking to them. Then, he was alone v/ith Sikes,
plodding on as on the previous day ; and as shadowy people passed
them, he felt the robber's grasp upon his wrist. Suddenly, he started
back at the report of firearms ; there rose into the air, loud cries and
shouts ; lights gleamed before his eyes ; all was noise and tumult, as
some unseen hand bore him hurriedly away. Through all these rapid
visions, there ran an undefined, uneasy consciousness of pain, which
wearied and tormented him incessantly.

Thus he staggered on, creeping, almost mechanically, between the
bars of gates, or through hedge-gaps as they came in his way, until
he reached a road. Here the rain began to fall so heavily, that it
roused him.

He looked about, and saw that at no great distance there was a
house, which perhaps he could reach. Pitying his condition, they
might have compassion on him ; and if they did not, it would be
better, he thought, to die near human beings, than in the lonely open
fields. He summoned up all his strength for one last trial, and bent
his faltering steps towards it.

As he drew nearer to this house, a feeling came over him that he
had seen it before. He remembered nothing of its details ; but the
shape and aspect of the building seemed familiar to him.

That garden wall! On the grass inside, he had fallen on his
knees last night, and prayed the two men's mercy. It was the very
house they bad attempted to rob.

Oliver felt such fear come over him when he recognised the place,
that, for the instant, he forgot the agony of his wound, and thought
only of fliglit. Flight ! He could scarcely stand : and if he were in
full possession of all the best powers of his slight and youthful frame,
whither could he fly ? He pushed against the gai'den-gate ; it was
unlocked, and swung open on its hinges. He tottered across the
lawn ; climbed the steps ; knocked faintly at the door ; and, his whole
strength failing him, sunk down against one of the pillars of the little
portico.

It happened that about this time, Mr. Giles, Brittles, and the tinker,
were recruiting themselves, after the fatigues and terrors of the night,
with tea and sundries, in the kitchen. Not that it was Mr. Giles's
habit to admit to too great familiarity the humbler servants : towards
whom it was rather his wont to deport himself with a lofty affability,
which, while it gratified, could not fail to remind them of his superior
position in society. But, death, fires, and burglary, make all men
equals ; so Mr. Giles sat with his legs stretched out before the kitchen
fender, leaning his left arm on the table, while, with his right, he
illustrated a circumstantial and miniite account of the robbery, to
which his hearers (but especially the cook and housemaid, who were
of the party) listened with breathless interest.

172 Oliver Twist,

" It was about half-past two," said Mr. Giles, " or I wouldn't swear
that it mightn't have been a little nearer three, when I woke up, and,
turning round in my bed, as it might bo so, (here Mr. Giles turned
round in his chair, and pulled the corner of the table-cloth over him
to imitate bed-clothes,) I fancied I heerd a noise."

At this point of the narrative the cook turned pale, and asked the
housemaid to shut the door : who asked Brittles, who asked the tinker,
who pretended not to hear.

" — Heerd a noise," continued Mr. Giles. " I says, at first, ' This
is illusion ; ' and was composing myself off to sleep, when I heerd the
noise again, distinct."

*' What sort of a noise ? " asked the cook.

" A kind of a busting noise," replied Mr. Giles, looking round him.

" More like the noise of powdering a iron bar on a nutmeg-grater,"
suggested Brittles.

" It was, when you heerd it, sir," rejoined Mr. Giles ; " but, at this
time, it had a busting sound. I turned down the clothes ; " continued
Giles, rolling back the table-cloth, " sat up in bed ; and listened."

The cook and housemaid simultaneously ejaculated " Lor ! " and
drew their chairs closer together.

" I heerd it now, quite apparent," resumed Mr. Giles. " * Some-
body,' I says, • is forcing of a door, or window ; what's to be done ?
I'll call up that poor lad, Brittles, and save him from being murdered
in his bed ; or his throat,' I says, ' may be cut from his right ear to
his left, without his ever knowing it.' "

Here, all eyes were turned upon Brittles, who fixed his upon the
speaker, and stared at him, with his mouth wide open, and his face
expressive of the most unmitigated horror.

" I tossed off the clothes," said Giles, throwing away the table-cloth,
and looking very hard at the cook and housemaid, " got softly out of
bed ; drew on a pair of "

" Ladies present, Mr. Giles," murmured the tinker.

" — Of shoes, sii"," said Giles, turning upon him, and laying great
emphasis on the word; "seized the loaded pistol that always goes
up-stairs with the plate-basket ; and walked on tiptoes to his room.
* Brittles,' I says, when I had woke him, ' don't be frightened ! ' "

" So you did," observed Brittles, in a low voice.

(t i We're dead men, I think, Brittles,' I says," continued Giles ;
« ' but don't be frightened.' "

" Was he frightened ? " asked the cook.

" Not a bit of it," replied Mr. Giles. " He was as firm— ah ! pretty
near as fixm as I was."

" I should have died at once, I'm sure, if it had been me," observed
the housemaid.

" You're a woman," retorted Brittles, plucking up a little.

" Brittles is riglit," said Mr. Giles, nodding his head, approvingly ;
«• from a woman, nothing else was to be expeqted. We, being men,

aU^€^

• — And is bravely Captured. 173

took a dark lantern that was standing on Brittles's hob, and groped our
way down-stairs in the pitch dark, — as it might be so."

Mr. Giles had risen from his seat, and taken two steps with his
eyes shut, to accompany his description with appropriate action, when
he started violently, in common with the rest of the company, and
hurried back to his chair. The cook and housemaid screamed.

" It was a knock," said Mr. Giles, assuming perfect serenity. " Open
the door, somebody."

Nobody moved.

" It seems a strange sort of a thing, a knock coming at such a time
in the morning," said Mr. Giles, surveying the pale faces which sur-
rounded him, and looking very blank himself ; " but the door must
be opened. Do you hear, somebody ? "

Mr. Giles, as he spoke, looked at Brittles ; but that young man,
being naturally modest, probably considered himself nobody, and so
held that the inquiry could not have any application to him ; at all
events, he tendered no reply. Mr. Giles directed an appealing glance
at the tinker ; but ho had suddenly fallen asleep. The women were
out of the question.

" If Brittles would rather open the door, in the presence of wit-
nesses," said Mr. Giles, after a short silence, " I am ready to make
one."

" So am I," said the tinker, waking up, as suddenly as he had fallen
asleep.

Brittles capitulated on these terms ; and the party being somewhat
re-assured by the discovery (made on throwing open the shutters) that
it was now broad day, took their way up-stairs ; with the dogs in
front. The two women, who were afraid to stay below, brought up
the rear. By the advice of Mr. Giles, they all talked very loud, to
warn any evil-disposed person outside, that they were strong in
numbers ; and by a master-stroke of policy, originating in the brain
of the same ingenious gentleman, the dogs' tails were well pinched, in
the hall, to make them bark savagely.

These precautions having been taken, Mr. Giles held on fast by the
tinker's arm (to prevent his running away, as he pleasantly said), and
gave the word of command to open the door. Brittles obeyed ; the
group, peeping timorously over each other's shoulders, beheld no
more formidable object than poor little Oliver Twist, speechless
and exhausted, who raised his heavy eyes, and mutely solicited their
compassion.

" A boy ! " exclaimed Mr. Giles, valiantly pushing the tinker into
the background. " What's the matter with the — eh ? — Why — Brittles
— look here — don't you know ? " ,

Brittles, who had got behind the door to open it, no sooner saw
Oliver, than he uttered a loud cry. Mr. Giles, seizing the boy by one
leg and one arm (fortunately not the broken limb) lugged him straight
into the hall, and deposited him at full length on the floor thereof.

174 Oliver Twist.

" Here he is ! " bawled Giles, calling, in a state of great excitement,
up the staircase ; " here's one of the thieves, ma'am ! Here's a
thief, miss ! Wounded, miss ! I shot him, miss ; and Brittles held
the light."

" — In a lantern, miss," cried Brittles, applying one hand to the
side of his mouth, so that his voice might travel the better.

The two women-servants ran up-stairs to carry the intelligence that
Mr. Giles had captured a robber ; and the tinker busied himself in
endeavouring to restore Oliver, lest he should die before he could be
hanged. In the midst of all this noise and commotion, there was
heard a sweet female voice, which quelled it in an instant.

" Giles ! " whispered the voice from the stair-head.

" I'm here, miss," replied Mr. Giles. " Don't be frightened, miss ;
I ain't much injured. He didn't make a very despei'ate resistance,
miss ! I was soon too many for him."

" Hush ! " replied the young lady ; " you frighten my aunt as much
as the thieves did. Is the poor creature much hurt ? "

" Wounded desperate, miss," replied Giles, with indescribable
complacency.

" He looks as if he was a-going, miss," bawled Brittles, in the same
manner as before. " Wouldn't you like to come and look at him, miss,
in case he should ? "

" Hush, pray ; there's a good man ! " rejoined the lady. " Wait
quietly only one instant, while I speak to aunt."

With a footstep as soft and gentle as the voice, the speaker tripped
away. She soon returned, with the direction that the wounded person
was to be carried, carefully, up-stairs to Mr. Giles's room ; and that
Brittles was to saddle the pony and betake himself instantly to
Chertsey : from which place, he was to despatch, with all speed, a
constable and doctor.

" But won't you take one look at him, first, miss ? " asked Mr. Giles,
with as much pride as if Oliver were some bird of rare plumage, that
he had skilfully brought down. " Not one little peep, miss ? "

" Not now, for the world," replied the young lady. " Poor fellow !
Oh t treat him kindly, Giles, for my sake ! "

The old servant looked up at the speaker, as she turned away, with
a glance as proud and admiring as if she had been his own child.
Then, bending over Oliver, he helped to carry him up-stairs, with the
care and solicitude of a woman.

CHAPTER XXIX.

HAS AN INTRODUCTORY ACCOUNT OP THE INMATES OF THE HOUSE, TO
WHICH OLIVER RESORTED.

In a handsome room : though Its furniture had rather the air of old-
fashioned comfort, than of modern elegance : there sat two ladies at a
well-spread breakfast-table. Mr. Giles, dressed with scrupulous care
in a full suit of black, was in attendance upon them. He had taken
his station some half-way between the side-board and the breakfast-
table ; and, with his body drawn up to its full height, his head thrown
back, and inclined the merest trifle on one side, his left leg advanced,
and his right hand thrust into his waistcoat, while his left hung dow^n
by his side, grasping a waiter, looked like one who laboured under a
very agreeable sense of his own merits and importance.

Of the two ladies, one was well advanced in years ; but the high-
backed oaken chair in which she sat, was not more upright than she.
Dressed with the utmost nicety and precision, in a quaint mixture of
by-gone costume, with some slight concessions to the prevailing taste,
which rather served to point the old style pleasantly than to impair
its effect, she sat, in a stately manner, with her hands folded on the
table before her. Her eyes (and age had dimmed but little of their
brightness) were attentively fixed upon her young companion.

The younger lady was in the lovely bloom and spring-time of
womanhood ; at that age, when, if ever angels be for God's good pur-
poses enthroned in mortal forms, they may be, without impiety, sup-
posed to abide in such as hers.

She was not past seventeen. Cast in so slight and exquisite a
mould ; so mUd and gentle ; so pure and beautiful ; that earth seemed
not her element, nor its rough creatures her fit companions. The very
intelligence that shone in her deep blue eye, and was stamped upon
her noble head, seemed scarcely of her age, or of the world ; and yet
the changing expression of sweetness and good humour, the thousand
lights that played about the face, and left no shadow there ; above all,
the smile, the cheerful, happy smile, were made for Home, and fireside
peace and happiness.

She was busily engaged in the little offices of the table. Chancing
to raise her eyes as the elder lady was regarding her, she playfully put
back her hair, which was simply braided on her forehead ; and threw
into her beaming look, such an expression of aflfection and artless
loveliness, that blessed spirits might have smiled to look upon her.

" And Brittles has been gone upwards of an hour, has he ? " asked
the old lady, after a pause.

" An hour and twelve minutes, ma'am," replied Mr. Giles, referring
to a silver watch, which he drew forth by a black ribbon.

176 Oliver Twist

" He is always slow," remarked the old lady.

"Brittles always was a slow boy, ma'am," replied tte attendant.
And seeing, by the bye, that Brittles had been a slow boy for upwards
of thirty years, there appeared no great probability of his ever being
a fast one.

" Ho gets worse instead of better, I think," said the elder lady.

" It is very inexcusable in him if he stops to play with any other
boys," said the young lady, smiling.

Mr. Giles was apparently considering the propriety of indulging in
a respectful smile himself, when a gig drove up to the garden gate :
out of which there jumped a fat gentleman, who ran straight up to the
door : and who, getting quickly into the house by some mysterious
process, burst into the room, and nearly overturned Mr. Giles and the
breakfiist-table together.

" I never heard of such a thing ! " exclaimed the fat gentleman.
" My dear Mrs. Maylie — bless my soul — in the silence of night, too —
I never heard of such a thing ! "

"With these expressions of condolence, the fat gentleman shook
hands with both ladies, and drawing up a chair, inquired how they
found themselves.

" You ought to be dead ; positively dead with the fright," said the
fat gentleman. " Why didn't you send ? Bless me, my man should
have come in a minute ; and so would I ; and my assistant would have
been delighted ; or anybody, I'm sure, under such circumstances.
Dear, dear ! So unexpected ! In the silence of night, too ! "

The doctor seemed especially troubled by the fact of the robbery
having been unexpected, and attempted in the night-time ; as if it
were the established custom of gentlemen in the housebreaking way
to transact business at noon, and to make an appointment, by post, a
day or two previous.

" And you, Miss Rose," said the doctor, turning to the young lady,
« I »

" Oh ! very much so, indeed," said Rose, interrupting him ; " but
there is a poor creature up-stairs, whom aunt wishes you to see."

" Ah ! to be sure," replied the doctor, " so there is. That was your
handiwork, Giles, I understand."

Mr. Giles, who had been feverishly putting the tea-cups to rights,
blushed very red, and said that he had had that honour.

" Honour, eh ? " said the doctor ; " well, I don't know ; perhaps it's
as honourable to hit a thief in a back kitchen, as to hit your man at
twelve paces. Fancy that he fired in the air, and you've fought a
duel, Giles."

Mr. Giles, who thought this light treatment of the matter an unjust
attempt at diminishing his glory, answered respectfully, that it was
not for the like of him to judge about that ; but he rather thought it
was no joke to the opposite party.

*' Gad, that's true 1 " said the doctor. •' Where is he ? Show me

The Doctor artives. lyy

the way. I'll look in again, as I come down, Mrs. Maylie. That's
the little window that ho got in at, eh ? Well, I couldn't have be-
lieved it ! "

Talking all the way, he followed Mr. Giles np-stairs ; and while
he is going up-staii's, the reader may be informed, that Mr. Losberne,
a surgeon i^the neighbourhood, known through a circuit of ten miles
round as " the doctor," had grown fat, more from good-humour than
from good living : and was as kind and hearty, and withal as eccentric
an old bachelor, as will be found in five times that space, by any
explorer alive.

The doctor was absent, much longer than either he or the ladies
had anticipated. A large flat box was fetched out of the gig ; and a
bedroom bell was rung very often ; and the servants ran up and
down stairs perpetually ; from which tokens it was justly concluded
that something important was going on above. At length he returned ;
and in reply to an anxious inquiry after his patient, looked very
mysterious, aud closed the door, carefully.

" This is a very extraordinary thing, Mrs. Maylie," said the doctor,
standing with his back to the door, as if to keep it shut.

" He is not in danger, I hope ? " said the old lady.

" Why, that would not be an extraordinary thing, under the circum-
stances," replied tho doctor ; " though I don't think he is. Have you
seen this thief ? "

" No," rejoined the old lady.

" Nor heard anything about him ? "

« No."

" I beg your pardon, ma'am," interposed Mr. Giles ; " but I was
going to tell you about him when Doctor Losberne came in."

The fact was, that Mr. Giles had not, at first, been able to bring
his mind to the avowal, that he had only shot a boy. Such com-
mendations had been bestowed upon his bravery, that he could not,
for the life of him, help postponing the explanation for a few delicious
minutes ; during which he had flourished, in the very zenith of a brief
reputation for undaunted courage.

" Kose wished to see the man," said Mrs. Maylie, " but I wouldn't
hear of it."

" Humph ! " rejoined the doctor. " There is nothing very alarming
in his appearance. Have you any objection to see him in my
presence ? "

" If it be necessary," replied the old lady, " certainly not."

" Then I think it is necessary," said the doctor ; " at all events, I
am quite sure that you would deeply regret not having done so, if you
postponed it. He is perfectly quiet and comfortable now. Allow me
— Miss Rose, will you permit me ? Not the slightest fear, I pledge
you ray honour ! "

CHAPTER XXX.

BEIJLTES WHAT OLIVER'S NEW VISITORS THOUGHT OF HIM.

With many loquacious assurances that they would be agreeably
surprised in the aspect of the criminal, the doctor drew the young
lady's arm through one of his ; and oflfering his disengaged hand to
Mrs. Maylie, led them, with much ceremony and stateliness, up-
stairs.

" Now," said the doctor, in a whisper, as he softly turned the handle
of a bedroom-dooi', "let us hear what you think of him. Ho has
not been shaved very recently, but he don't look at all ferocious
notwithstanding. Stop, though! Let me first see that he is in
visiting order."

Stopping before them, he looked into the room. Motioning them
to advance, he closed the door when they had entered ; and gently
drew back the curtains of the bed. Upon it, in lieu of the dogged,
black- visaged ruffian they had expected to behold, there lay a mere
child : worn with pain and exhaustion, and sunk into a deep sleep.
His wounded arm, bound and splintered up, was crossed upon his
breast ; his head reclined upon the other arm, which was helf hidden
by his long hair, as it streamed over the pillow.

The honest gentleman held the curtain in his hand, and looked on
for a minute or so, in silence. Whilst he was watching the patient
thus, the younger lady glided softly past, and seating herself in a
chair by the bedside, gathered Oliver's hair from his face. As she
stooped over him, her tears fell upon his forehead.

The boy stirred, and smiled in his sleep, as though these marks of
pity and compassion had awakened some pleasant dream of a love and
affection he had never known. Thus, a strain of gentle music, or the
rippling of water in a silent place, or the odour of a flower, or the
mention of a familiar word, will sometimes call up sudden dim
remembrances of scenes that never were, in this life ; which vanish
like a breath ; which some brief memory of a happier existence, long
gone by, would seem to have awakened ; which no voluntary exertion
of the mind can ever recftll.

" What can this mean ? " exclaimed the elder lady. " This poor
child can never have been the pupil of robbers ! "

" Vice," said the surg<>on, replacing the curtain, " takes up hor
abode in many temples ; aud who can say that a fair outside shall not
enshrine her ? ''
, " But at so early an age i " urged Rose.

"My dear young lady /' rejoined the surgeon, mournfully shaking
his head ; " crime, like death, is not confined to the old and withered
alone. The youngest and fairest are too often its chosen victims."

The Doctor prescribes. 179

*' But, can you — oh ! can you really bolicve that this delicate boy
has been the voluntary associate of the worst outcasts of society ? "
said Hose.

The surgeon shook his head, in a manner which intimated that he
feared it was very possible ; and observing that they might distuib
the patient, led the way into an adjoining apai-tment.

" But even if he has been wicked," pursued Rose, " think how
young he is ; think that he may never have known a mother's love,
or the comfort of a home ; that ill-usage and blows, or the want of
bread, may have driven him to herd with men who have forced him
to guilt. Aunt, dear aunt, for mercy's sake, think of this, before you
let them drag this sick child to a prison, which in any case must bo
the grave of all his chances of amendment. Oh ! as you love me, and
know that I have never felt the want of parents in your goodness and
affection, but that I might have done so, and might have been equally
helpless and* unprotected with this poor child, have pity upon him
before it is too late ! "

" My dear love," said the elder lady, as she folded the weeping girl
to her bosom, " do yon think I would harm a hair of his head ? "

" Oh, no ! " replied Rose, eagerly.

" No, surely," said the old lady ; " my days jo-e drawing to their
close : and may mercy be shown to me as I show it to others ! What
can I do to save him, sir ? "

" Let me think, ma'am," said the doctor ; " let me think."

Mr. Losberne thrust his hands into his pockets, and took several
turas up and down the room ; often stopping, and balancing himself
on his toes, and frowning frightfully. After various exclamations of
•' I've got it now " and " no, I haven't," and as many renewals of the
walking and frowning, he at leUgth made a dead halt, and spoke as
follows :

" I think if you give me a full and unlimited commission to bully
Giles, and that little boy, Brittles, I can manage it. Giles is a faithful
fellow and an old servant, I know ; but you can make it up to him in
a thousand ways, and reward him for being such a good shot besides.
You don't object to that ? "

" Unless there is some other way of preserving the child," replied
Mrs. Maylie.

" There is no other," said the docior. " No other, lake my word
for it."

" Then my aunt invests you with full power," said Rose, smiling
through her tears ; " but pray don't be harder upon the poor fellows
than is indispensably necessary."

" You seem to think," retorted the doctor, " that everybody is dis-
posed to be hard-heaited to-day, except yourself. Miss Rose. I only
hope, for the sake of the rising male sex generally, that you may be
found in as vidnerable and soft-hearted a mood by the first eligible
young fellow who appeals to your compaSeion ; and I wish I were '<^

i8o Oliver Twist.

young fellow, that I might avail myself, on the spot, of such a favour-
able opportunity for doing so, as the present."

" You are as great a boy as poor Brittles himseK," returned Rose,
blushing.

" Well," said the doctor, laughing heartily, " that is no very difficult
matter. But to return to this boy. The great point of our agreement
is yet to come. He will wake in an hour or so, I dare say ; and
although I have told that thick-headed constable-fellow down-stairs
that ho mustn't be moved or spoken to, on peril of his life, I think we
may converse -with him without danger. Now I make this stipulation
— that I shall examine him in your presence, and that, if, from what
he says, we judge, and I can show to the satisfaction of your cool
reason, that he is a real and thorough bad one (which is more than
possible), he shall be left to his fate, without any fai'ther interference
on my part, at all events."

" Oh no, aunt ! " entreated Rose.

" Oh yes, aunt ! " said the doctor. " Is it a bargain ? "

" He cannot be hardened in vice," said Rose ; " It is impossible."

" Very good," retorted the doctor ; " then so much the more reason
for acceding to my proposition."

Finally the treaty was entered into ; and the parties thereunto sat
down to wait, with some impatience, until Oliver should awake.

The patience of the two ladies was destined to undergo a longer
trial than Mr. Losberne had led them to expect ; for hour after hour
passed on, and still Oliver slumbered heavily. It was evening, indeed,
before the kind-hearted doctor brought them the intelligence, that he
was at length sufficiently restored to be spoken to. The boy was very
ill, he said, and weak from the loss of blood ; but his mind was so
troubled with anxiety to disclose something, that he deemed it better
to give him the opportunity, than to insist upon his remaining quiet
imtil next morning : which he should otherwise have done.

The conference was a long one. Oliver told them all his simple
history, and was often compelled to stop, by pain and want of strength.
It was a solemn thing, to hear, in the darkened room, the feeble voice
of the sick child recounting a weary catalogue of evils and calamities
which hard men had brought upon him. Oh ( if when we oppress and
grind our fellow-creatures, we bestowed but one thought on the dark
evidences of human error, which, like dense and heavy clouds, are
rising, slowly it is trae, but not less surely, to Heaven, to pour their
after- vengeance on our heads ; if we heard but one instant, in imagina-
tion, the deep testimony of dead men's voices, which no power can
stifle, and no pride shut out ; where would be the injury and injustice,
the suffering, misery, cruelty, and wrong, that each day's life brings
with it !

Oliver's pillow was smoothed by gentle hands that night ; and love-
liness and virtue watched him as he slept. He felt calm and happy^
and could have died without a murmur.

The Remedies administered. i8l

The momentous interview was no sooner concluded, and Oliver
composed to rest again, than the doctor, after wiping his eyes, and
condemning them for being weak all at once, betook himself down-
stairs to open upon Mr. Giles. And finding nobody about the parlours,
it occurred to him, that he could perhaps originate the proceedings
with better effect in the kitchen ; so into the kitchen he went.

There were assembled, in that lower house of the domestic parlia-
ment, the women-servants, Mr. Brittles, Mr. Giles, the tinker (who had
received a special invitation to regale himself for the remainder of the
day, in consideration of his services), and the constable. The latter
gentleman had a large staff, a large head, large features, and large
half-boots ; and he looked as if he had been taking a proportionate
allowance of ale — as indeed he had.

The adventures of the previous night were still under discussion ;
for Mr. Giles was expatiating upon his presence of mind, when the
doctor entered ; Mr. Brittles, with a mug of ale in his hand, was
corroborating everything, before his superior said it.

" Sit still ! " said the doctor, waving his hand.

"Thank you, sir," said Mr. Giles. "Misses wished some ale to
be given out, sir ; and as I felt no ways inclined for my own little
room, sir, and was disposed for company, I am taking mine among 'em
here."

Brittles headed a low murmur, by which the ladies and gentlemen
generally were understood to express the gratification they derived
from Mr. Giles's condescension. Mr. Giles looked round with a
patronising air, as much as to say that so long as they behaved
properly, he would never desert them.

" How is the patient to-night, sir ? " asked Giles.

" So-so ; " returned the doctor. " I am afraid you have got yourself
into a scrape there, Mr. Giles."

"I hope you don't mean to say, sir," said Mr. Giles, trembling,
" that he's going to die. If I thought it, I should never be happy
again. I wouldn't cut a boy off: no, not even Brittles here : not for
all the plate in the county, sir."

" That's not the point," said the doctor, mysteriously. " Mr. Giles,
are you a Protestant ? "

" Yes, sii*, I hope so," faltered Mr. Giles, who had turned very pale.

" And what are you, boy ? " said the doctor, turning sharply upon
Brittles.

" Lord bless me, sir ! " replied Brittles, starting violently ; " I'm —
the same as Mr, Giles, sir."

" Then tell me this," said the doctor, " both of you, both of you !
Are you going to take upon yourselves to swear, that that boy up-
stairs is the boy that was put through the little window last night ?
Out with it ! Come ! We are prepared for you ! "

The doctor, who was universally considered one of the best-
tempered creatures on earth, made this demand in such a dreadfnl

1 82 Oliver Twist.

tone of anger, that Giles and Brittles, who were considerably muddled
by ale and excitement, stared at each other in a state of stupefaction.

" Pay attention to the reply, constable, will you ? " said the doctor,
shaking his forefinger with great solemnity of manner, and tapping
the bridge of his nose with it, to bespeak the exercise of that worthy's
utmost acuteness. " Something may come of this before long."

The constable looked as wise as he could, and took up his staff of
office : which had been reclining indolently in the chimney-corner.

"It's a simple question of identity, you will observe," said the
doctor.

" That's what it is, sir," replied the constable, coughing with great
violence ; for he had finished his ale in a hurry, and some of it had
gone the wrong way.

" Here's a house broken into," said the doctor, " and a couple of
men catch one moment's glimpse of a boy, in the midst of gun-
powder-smoke, and in all the distraction of alarm and darkness.
Here's a boy comes to that very same house, next morning, and because
he happens to have his arm tied up, these men lay violent hands upon
him — by doing which, they place his life in great danger — and swear
he is the thief. Now, the question is, whether these men are justified
by tiie fact ; if not, in what situation do they place themselves ? "

The constable nodded profoundly. He said, if that wasn't law, he
would be glad to know what was.

" I ask you again," thundered the doctor, " are you, on your solemn
oaths, able to identify that boy ? "

Brittles looked doubtfully at Mr. Giles ; Mr. Giles looked doubt-
fully at Brittles ; the constable put his hand behind his ear, to catch
the reply ; the two women and the tinker leaned forward to listen ;
the doctor glanced keenly round ; when a ring was heard at the gate,
and at the same moment, the sound of wheels.

" It's the runners ! " cried Brittles, to all appearance much relieved.

" The what ? " exclaimed the doctor, aghast in his turn.

" The Bow Street officers, sir," replied Brittles, taking up a candle ;
" me and Mr. Giles sent for 'em this morning."

« What ? " cried the doctor.

" Yes," replied Brittles ; " I sent a message up by the coachman,
and I only wonder they weren't here before, sir."

" You did, did you ? Then confound your — slow coaches down
here ; that's all," said the doctor, walking away.

CHArTER XXXI.

INVOLVES A CRITICAL POSITION.

" Who's tliat ? " inquired Brittles, opening tlio door a little ^\ay,
with the chain up, and peeping out, shading the candle with his
hand.

" Open the door," replied a man outside ; " it's the ojBficers froriPBow
Street, as was sent to, to-day."

Much comforted by this assurance, Brittles opened the door to its
full width, and confronted a portly man in a great-coat ; who walked
in, without saying anything more, and wiped his shoes on the mat, as
coolly as if he lived there.

"Just send somebody out to relievo my mate, will you, young
man ? " said the officer ; " he's in the gig, a-minding the prad. Have
you got a coach 'us here, that you could put it up in, for five or ten
minutes ? "

Brittles replying in the affirmative, and pointing out the building,
the portly man stepped back to the garden-gate, and helped his com-
panion to put up the gig : while Brittles lighted them, in a state ox
great admiration. This done, they returned to the house, and, being
shown into a parlour, took off their great-coats and hats, and showed
like what they were.

The man who had knocked at the door, was a stout personage of
middle height, aged about fifty : with shiny black hair, cropped pretty
close ; half- whiskers, a round face, and sharp eyes. The other was
a rcd-hcaded, bony man, in top-boots ; with a rather ill-favoured
countenance, and a turned-up sinister-looking nose.

" Tell your governor that Blathers and Duff is here, will you ? "
said the stouter man, smoothing down his hair, and laying a pair of
handcuffs on the table. " Oh ! Good-evening, master. Can I have a
word or two with you in private, if you please ? "

This was addressed to Mr. Losberne, who now made his appearance ;
that gentleman, motioning Brittles to retire, brought in the two ladies,
and shut the door.

" This is the lady of the house," said Mr. Losberne, motioning
towards Mrs. Maylie.

Mr. Blathers made a bow. Being desired to sit down, he put his
hat on the floor, and taking a chair, motioned Duff to do the same.
The latter gentleman, who did not appear quite so much accustomed
to good society, or quite so much at his ease in it — one of the two —
seated himself, after undergoing several muscular affections of tho
limbs, and forced tho head of his stick into his mouth, with some
embarrassment.

184 Oliver Twist

"Now, with regard to this here robbery, master," said Blathers.
" What are the circumstances ? "

Mr. Losberne, who appeared desirous of gaining time, recounted
them at great length, and with much circumlocution. Messrs. Blathers
and DuflF looked very knowing meanwhile, and occasionally exchanged
a nod.

"I can't say, for certain, till I see the work, of course," said
Blathers; "but my opinion at once is, — I don't mind committing
myself to that extent, — that this wasn't done by a yokel ; eh. Duff? "

" (^tainly not," replied Duff.

" And, translating the word yokel for the benefit of the ladies, I
apprehend your meaning to be, that this attempt was not made by a
countryman ? " said Mr. Losberne, with a smile.

" That's it, master," replied Blathers. " This is all about the
robbery, is it ? "

*' All," replied the doctor.

"Now, what is this, about this here boy that the servants are
a-talking on ? " said Blathers.

" Nothing at all," replied the doctor. " One of the frightened
servants chose to take it into his head, that he had something to do
with this attempt to break into the house ; but it's nonsense : sheer
absurdity."

" Wery easy disposed of, if it is," remarked Duff.

" What he says is quite correct,^' observed Blathers, nodding his
head in a confirmatory way, and playing carelessly with the handcuffs,
as if they were a pair of castanets. " Who is the boy ? What account
does he give of himself? Where did he come from ? He didn't drop
out of the clouds, did he, master ? "

" Of course not," replied the doctor, with a nervous glance at the
two ladies. " I know his whole history : but we can talk about that
presently. You would like, first, to see the place where the thieves
made their attempt, I suppose ? "

" Certainly," rejoined Mr, Blathers. " We had better inspect the
premises first, and examine the servants arterwards. That's the usual
■way of doing business."

Lights were then procured ; and Messrs. Blathers and Duff, attended
by the native constable, Brittles, Giles, and everybody else in short,
went into the little room at the end of the passage and looked out
at the window ; and afterwards went round by way ot the lawn, and
looked in at the window ; and after that, had a candle handed out to
inspect the shutter with ; and after that, a lantern to trace the foot-
steps with ; and after that, a pitchfork to poke the bushes with. This
done, amidst the breathless interest of all beholders, they came in
again ; and Mr. Giles and Brittles were put through a melodramatic
representation of their share in the previous night's adventures:
which they performed some six times over : contradicting each other,
in not more than one important respect, the first time, and in not

The Doctor's Opinion. 185

more tlian a dozen the last. This consummation being arrived at,
Blathers and Duff cleared the room, and held a long council together,
compared with which, for secrecy and solemnity, a consultation of
great doctors on the knottiest point in medicine, would be mere child's
play.

Meanwhile, the doctor walked up and down the next room in a
very uneasy state ; and Mrs. Maylie and Rose looked on, with anxious
faces.

" Upon my word," he said, making a halt, after a great number of
very rapid turns, " I hardly know what to do."

" Surely," said Rose, " the poor child's story, faithfully repeated to
these men, will be sufficient to exonerate him."

" I doubt it, my dear young lady," said the doctor, shaking his
head. *' I don't think it would exonerate him, either with them, ^^x
with legal functionaries of a higher gi-ade. What is he, after all, tlioy
would say? A runaway. Judged by mere worldly considerations
and probabilities, his story is a very doubtful one."

*' You believe it, surely ? " interrupted Rose.

" I believe it, strange as it is ; and perhaps I may be an old fool
for doing so," I'ejoined the doctor ; " but I don't think it is exactly
the tale for a practised police-officer, nevertheless."

" Why not ? " demanded Rose.

" Because, my pretty cross-examiner," replied the doctor : " because,
viewed with their eyes, there are many ugly points about it ; he can
only prove the parts that look ill, and none of those that look well.
Confound the fellows, they will have the why and the wherefore, and
will take nothing for granted. On his own showing, you see, he has
been' the companion of thieves for some time past ; he has been carried
to a police-office, on a charge of picking a gentleman's pocket , he
has been taken away, forcibly, from that gentleman's house, to a place
which he cannot describe or point out, and of the situation of which
he has not the remotest idea. He is brought down to Chertsey, by
men who seem to have taken a violent fancy to him, whether he will
or no ; and is put through a window to rob a house ; and then, just at
the very moment when he is going to alarm the inmates, and so do
the very thing that would set him all to rights, there rushes into the
way, a blundering dog of a half-bred butler, and shoots him ! As if
on purpose to prevent his doing any good for himself! Don't you
see all this ? "

"I see it, of course," replied Rose, smiling at the doctor's im-
petuosity ; " but still I do not see anything in it, to criminate the
poor child."

" No," replied the doctor ; " of course not ! Bless the bright eyes
of your sex ! They never see, whether for good or bad, more than
one side of any question ; and that is, always, the one which first
presents itself to them."

Having given vent to this result of experience, the doctor put his

1 86 Oliver Twist.

hands into his pockets, and walked up and down the room with even
greater rapidity than before.

" The more I think of it," said the doctor, " the more I see that it
will occasion endless trouble and difficulty if we put these men in
possession of the boy's real story. I am certain it will not be believed ;
and even if they can do nothing to him in the end, still the dragging
it forward, and giving publicity to all the doubts that will be cast
upon it, must interfere, materially, with your benevolent plan of
rescuing him from misery."

" Oh ! what is to be done ? " cried Eose. " Dear, dear ! why did
they send for these people ? "

" Why, indeed ! " exclaimed Mrs. Maylie. " 1 would not have had
them here, for the world."

" All I know is/' said Mr. Losbeme, at last : sitting down with a
kind of desperate calmness, " that we must try and carry it off with a
bold face. The object is a good one, and that must be our excuse.
The boy has strong symptoms of fever upon him, and is in no con-
dition to be talked to any more ; that's one comfort. We must make
the best of it ; and if bad be the best, it is no fault of ours. Come
in ! "

" Well, master," said Blathers, entering the room followed by his
colleague, and making the door fast, before he said any more. " This
warn't a put-up thing."

"And what the devil's a put-up thing?" demanded the doctor,
impatiently.

"We call it a put-up robbery, ladies," said Blathers, turning to
them, as if he pitied their ignorance, but had a contempt for the
doctor's, " when the servants is in it."

" Nobody suspected them, in this caso,' said Mrs. Maylie.

"Worry likely not, ma'am," replied Blathers; "but they might
have been in it, for all that."

" More likely on that wery account," naid Duff.

"We find it was a town hand," :»id Blathers, continuing his
report ; " for the style of work is first-rate."

" Wery pretty indeed it is," remarked Duff, in an under tone.

" There was two of 'em in it," continued l31athers ; " and they had
a boy with 'em ; that's plain from the size of the window. ± hat's all
to be said at present. We'll see this lad that you've got up-stairs at
once, if you please."

" Perhaps they will take something to drink first, Mrs. Maylie ? "
said the doctor: his face brightening, as if some new thought had
occurred to him.

" Oh ! to be sure ! " exclaimed Rose, eagerly. " You shall have it
immediately, if you will."

" Why, thank you, miss ! " said Blathers, drav/ing his coat-sleeve
across his mouth ; "it's dry work, this sort of duty. Any think that's
handy miss ; don't put yourself out of the way, on our accounts."

Anecdote of Mr. Conkey Chickweed. 187-

" Wiat sball it be ? " asked the doctor, following the young lady to
the sideboard.

"A little drop of spirits, master, if it's all the same," replied
Blathere. " It's a cold ride from London, ma'am ; and I always find
that spirits comes home wanner to the feelings."

This interesting communication was addressed to Mrs. Maylie, who
received it very graciously. While it was being conveyed to her, the
doctor slipped out of the room.

" Ah ! " said Mr. Blathers : not holding his wine-glass by the stem,
but grasping the bottom between the thumb and forefinger of his left
hand : and placing it in front of his chest ; " I have seen a good
many pieces of business like this, in my time, ladies."

" That crack down in the back lane at Edmonton, Blathers," said
Mr. DuflF, assisting his colleague's memory.

'• That was something in this way, wam't it ? " rejoined Mr.
Blathers ; " that was done by Conkey Chickweed, that was."

" You always gave that to him," replied Dufi". " It was the Family
Pet, I tell you. Conkey hadn't any more to do with it than I had."

" Get out I " retorted Mr. Blathers ; " I know better. Do you mind
that time when Conkey was robbed of his money, though ? "What a
start that was ! Better than any novel- book I ever see ! "

" What was that ? " inquired Eose : anxious to encourage any
symptoms of good-humour in the unwelcome visitors.

" It was a robbery, miss, that hardly anybody would have been
down upon," said Blathers. " This here Conkey Chickweed "

*' Conkey means Nosey, ma'am," interposed Dufl;

"Of course the lady knows that, don't she?" demanded Mr.
Blathers. "Always inten-upting, you are, partner! This here
Conkey Chickweed, miss, kept a public-house over Battlebridge way,
and he had a cellar, where a good many young lords went to see cock-
fighting, and badger-drawing, and that; and a wery intellectual
manner the sports was conducted in, for I've seen 'em ofFen. He
warn't one of the family, at that time ; and one night he was robbed
of three hundred and twenty-seven guineas in a canvas bag, that was
stole out of his bedroom in the dead of night, by a tall man with a
black patch over his eye, who had concealed himself under the bed,
and after committing the robbery, jumped slap out of window : which
was only a story high. He was wery quick about it. But Conkey
was quick, too ; for lie was woke by the noise, and darting out of bed,
he fired a blunderbuss arter him, and roused the neighbourhood.
They set up a hue-and-cry, directly, and when they came to look
about 'em, found that Conkey had hit the robber ; for there was traces
of blood, all the way to some palings a good distance off ; and there
they lost 'era. However, he had made off with the blunt ; and, con-
sequently, the name of Mr. Chickweed, licensed witler, appeared in
the Gazette among the other bankrupts ; and all manner of benefits
and subscriptions, and I don't know what all, was got up for the poor

1 88 Oliver Twist.

man, who was in a wery low state of mind about liis loss, and went np
and down the streets, for three or four days, a pulling his hair off in
Buch a desperate manner that many people was afraid he might be
going to make away with himself. One day he come up to the office, all
in a hurry, and had a private interview with the magistrate, who, after
a deal of talk, rings the bell, and orders Jem Spyers in (Jem was a
active officer), and tells him to go and assist Mr. Chickweed in appre-
hending the man as robbed his house. 'I see him, Spyers,' said
Chickweed, ' pass my house yesterday morning.' ' Why didn't you
up, and collar him ! ' says Spyers. ' I was so struck all of a heap, that
you might have fractured my skull with a toothpick,' says the poor
man ; ' but we're sure to have him ; for between ten and eleven o'clock
at night he passed again.' Spyers no sooner heard this, than he put
some clean linen and a comb, in his pocket, in ease he should have to
stop a day or two ; and away he goes, and sets himself down at one of
the public-house windows behind the little red curtain, with his hat
on, all ready to bolt out, at a moment's notice. He was smoking his
pipO' here, late at night, when all of a sudden Chickweed roars out,
' Here he is ! Stop thief ! Murder!' Jem Spyers dashes out ; and
there he sees Chickweed, a-tearing down the street full cry. Away
goes Spyers ; on goes Chickweed ; round turns the people ; everybody
roars out, ' Thieves ! ' and Chickweed himself keeps on shouting, all
the time, like mad. Spyers loses sight of him a minute as he turns a
corner ; shoots round ; sees a little crowd ; dives in ; ' Which is the
man ? ' ' D — me ! ' says Chickweed, ' I've lost him again ! ' It was a
remarkable occurrence, but he warn't to be seen nowhere, so they
went back to the public-house. Next morning, Spyers took his old
place, and looked out, from behind the curtain, for a tall man with a
black patch over his eye, till his own two eyes ached again. At last,
he couldn't help shutting 'em, to ease 'em a minute ; and the very
moment he did so, he hears Chickweed a-roaring out, ' Here he is ! '
Off he starts once more, with Chickweed half-way down the street
ahead of him ; and after twice as long a run as the yesterday's one,
the man's lost again ! This was done, once or twice more, till one-
half the neighbours gave out that Mr. Chickweed had been robbed by
the devil, who was playing tricks with him arterwards ; and the other
half, that poor Mr. Chickweed had gone mad with grief."

" What did Jem Spyers say ? " inquired the doctor : who had
returned to the room shortly after the commencement of the story.

" Jem Spyers," resumed the officer, " for a long time said nothing at
all, and listened to everything without seeming to, which showed he
understood his business. But, one morning, he walked into the bar,
and taking out his snuff-box, says, ' Chickweed, I've found out who
done this here robbery.' ' Have you ? ' said Chickweed. ' Oh, my
dear Spyers, only let me have wengeance, and I shall die contented !
Oh, ray dear Spyers, where is the villain ! ' ' Come ! ' said Spyers,
offering him a pinch of ennff, 'none of that gammon I Yon did it

ASoi'!^ icTat>iCs v..

(^e6k^et/.^<>i<i//ea^ <^i^^^ /5^z^((P9z^^iMl£4S^^^^/n'/iMi>.

Mr, Giles in a Muddle. 189

yourself.' So ho had ; and a good bit of money he had made by it,
too ; and nobody would never have found it out, if he hadn't been so
precious anxious to keep up appearances ! " said Mr. Blathers, putting
down his wine-glass, and clinking the handcuffs together.

" Very curious, indeed," observed the doctor. "Now, if you please,
you can walk upstairs."

"If you please, sir," returned Mr. Blathers. Closely following
Mr. Losbeme, the two oflScers ascended to Oliver's bedroom ; Mr.
Giles preceding the party, with a lighted candle.

Oliver had been dozing ; but looked worse, and was more feverish
than he had appeared yet. Being assisted by the doctor, he managed
to sit up in bed for a minute or so ; and looked at the strangers with-
out at all understanding what was going forward — in fact, without
seeming to recollect where he was, or what had been passing.

" This," said Mr. Losl)eme, speaking softly, but with great vehemence
notwithstanding, " this is the lad, who, being accidentally wounded by
a spring-gun in some boyish trespass on Mr. What-d'ye-call-him's
grounds, at the back here, comes to the house for assistance this morn-
ing, and is immediately laid hold of and maltreated, by that ingenious
gentleman with the candle in his hand : who has placed his life in
considerable danger, as I can professionally certify."

Messrs. Blathers and Duff looked at Mr. Giles, as he was thus
recommended to their notice. The bewildered butler gazed from
them towards Oliver, and from Oliver towards Mr. Losberne, with a
most ludicrous mixture of fear and perplexity.

" You don't mean to deny that, I suppose ? " said the doctor, laying
Oliver gently down again.

" It was all done for the— for the best, sir," answered Giles. " I
am sure I thought it was the boy, or I wouldn't have meddled with
him. I am not of an inhimian disposition, sir."

" Thought it was what boy ? " inquired the senior officer.

" The housebreaker's boy, sir J " replied Giles. " They — they cer-
tainly had a boy."

" Well ? Do you think so now ? " inquired Blathers.

"Think what, now?" replied Giles, looking vacantly at his
questioner.

"Think it's the same boy, Stupid-head?" rejoined Blathers,
impatiently.

" I don't khow ; I really don't know," said Giles, with a rueful
countenance. " I couldn't swear to him."

" What do you think? " asked Mr. Blathers.

" I don't know what to think," replied poor Giles. " I don't think it is
the boy ; indeed, I'm almost certain that it isn't. You know it can't be."

" Has this man been a-drinking, sir ? " inquired Blathers, turning
to the doctor.

" What a precious muddle-headed chap you are ! " said Duff,
addressing Mr. Giles, with supreme contempt.

190 Oliver Twist.

Mr. Losborno had been feeling the i)atient'8 pulse dui-iug this shoi-t
dialogue ; but he now rose from the chair by the bedside, and re-
marked, that if the oj0ficers had any doubts upon the subject, they
would perhaps like to step into the next room, and have Brittles
before them.

Acting upon this suggestion, they adjourned to a neighbouring
apartment, where Mr. Brittles, being called in, involved himself and
his respected superior in such a wonderful maze of fresh contradictions
and impossibilities, as tended to throw no particular light on anything,
but the fact of his own strong mystification; except, indeed, his
declarations that he shouldn't know the real boy, if he were put before
him that instant ; that he had only taken Oliver to be he, because Mr.
Giles had said he was ; and that Mr. Giles had, five minutes previously,
admitted in the kitchen, that he began to be very much afraid he had
been a little too hasty.

Among other ingenious surmises, the question was then raised,
whether Mr. Giles had really hit anybody ; and upon examination of
the fellow pistol to that which he had fired, it turned out to have no
more destructive loading than gunpowder and brown paper: a dis-
covery which made a considerable impression on everybody but the
doctor, who had drawn the ball about ten minutes before. Upon no
one, however, did it make a greater impression than on Mr. Giles
himself; who, after labouring, for some hours, under the fear of
having mortally wounded a fellow-creature, eagerly caught at this
new idea, and favoured it to the utmost. Finally, the ofiicers, with-
out troubling themselves very much about Oliver, left the Chertsey
constable in the house, and took up their rest for that night in the
town ; promising to return next morning.

With the next morning, there came a rumour, that two men and a
boy were in the cage at Kingston, who had been apprehended over
night under suspicious cii'cumstances ; and to Kingston Messrs.
Blathers and Duff journeyed accordingly. The suspicious circum-
stances, however, resolving themselves, on investigation, into the one
fact, that they had been discovered sleeping under a haystack ; which,
although a great crime, is only punishable by imprisonment, and is,
in the merciful eye of the English law, and its comprehensive love of
all the king's subjects, held to be no satisfactory proof, in the absence
of all other evidence, that the sleeper, or sleepers, have committed
burglary accompanied with violence, and have therefore rendered
themselves liable to the punishment of death ; Messrs. Blathers and
Duff came back again, as wise as they went.

In short, after some more examination, and a great deal more con-
versation, a neighbouring magistrate was readily induced to take the
joint bail of Mrs. Maylie and Mr. Losberne for Oliver's appearance if
he should ever be called uj)on ; and Blathers and Duff, being rewarded
with a couple of guineas, returned to town with divided opinions on
the subject of their expedition: the latter gentleman on a mature

Beginning a Happy Life. 191

consideration of all the circumstances, inclining to the belief that
the burglarious attempt had originated with the Family Pet ; and the
former being equally disposed to concede the full merit of it to the
gi-eat Mr. Conkey Chickweed.

Meanwhile, Oliver gradually throve and prospered under the united
care of Mrs. Maylic, Eose, and the kind-hearted Mr. Losberne. If
fervent prayers, gushing from hearts overcharged with gratitude, be
heard in heaven — and if they be not, what prayers are ! — the blessings
which the orphan child called down upon them, sunk into their souls,
diflFasing peace and happiness.

CHAPTER XXXII.

OF THE HAPPT LIFE OUVER BEGAN TO LEAD WITH HIS KIND FBIENDS.

Oliver's ailings were neither slight nor few. In addition to the pain
and delay attendant on a broken limb, his exposure to the wet and
cold had brought on fever and ague : which hung about him for many
weeks, and reduced him sadly. But, at length, he began, by slow
degrees, to get better, and to be able to say sometimes, in a few tearful
words, how deeply he felt the goodness of the two sweet ladies, and
how ardently he hoped that when he grew strong and well again, he
could do something to show his gratitude ; only something which
would let them see the love and duty with which his breast was full ;
something, however slight, which would prove to them that their
gentle kindness had not been cast away ; but that the poor boy whom
their charity had rescued from misery, or death, was eager to serve
them with his whole heart and soul.

" Poor fellow ! " said Rose, when Oliver had been one day feebly
endeavouring to utter the words of thankfulness that rose to his palo
lips : " you shall have many opportunities of serving us, if you will.
We are going into the country, and my aunt intends that you shall
accompany us. The quiet place, the pure air, and all the pleasure
and beauties of spring, will restore you in a few days. We will
employ you in a hundred ways, when y^ou can bear the trouble."

" The trouble ! " cried Oliver. « Oh ! dear lady, if I could but
-work for you ; if I could only give you pleasure by watering your
flowers, or watching your birds, or running up and down the whole
day long, to make you happy ; what would I give to do it ! "

" Yon shall give nothing at all," said Miss Maylie, smiling ; '• for,
as I told you before, we shall employ you in a hundred ways ; and if
you only take half the trouble to please us, that you promise now, you
will make me very happy indeed."

" Happy, ma'am ! " cried Oliver ; " how kind of you to say bo I "

192 Oliver Twist.

" You will make me happier than I can tell you," replied the young
lady. " To think that my dear good aunt should have been the means
of rescuing any one from such sad misery as you have described to
us, would be an unspeakable pleasure to me ; but to know that the
object of her goodness and compassion was sincerely grateful and
attached, in consec[uenco, would delight me, more than you can well
imagine. Do you understand me ? " she inquired, watching Oliver's
thoughtful face.

" Oh yes, ma'am, yes ! " replied Oliver, eagerly ; " but I was think-
ing that I am ungrateful now."

" To whom ? " inquired the young lady.

" To the kind gentleman, and the dear old nurse, who took so much
care of me before," rejoined Oliver. " If they knew how happy I am,
they would be pleased, I am sure."

" I am sure they would," rejoined Oliver's benefactress ; " and Mr.
Losberne has already been kind enough, to promise that when you are
well enough to bear the journey, he will carry yon to see them."

" Has he, ma'am ? " cried Oliver, his face brightening with pleasure.
" I don't know what I shall do for joy when I see their kind faces
once again ! "

In a short time Oliver wac sufl&ciently recovered to undergo the
fatigue of this expedition. One morning he and Mr. Losberne set
out, accordingly, in a little carriage which belonged to Mrs Maylie.
When they came to Chertsey Bridge, Oliver tui'ned very pale, and
Tittered a loud exclamation.

" What's the matter with the boy ? " cried the doctor, as usual, all
in a bustle. " Do you see anything — hear anythmg — feel anything —
eh?"

" That, sir," cried Oliver, pointing out of the carriage window.
*' That house ! "

"Yes; well, what of it? Stop, coachman. Pull up here," cried
the doctor. " What of the house, my man ; eh ? "

" The thieves — the house they took me to ! " whispered Oliver.

" The devil it is ! " cried the doctor. " Hallo, there ! let me
out ! "

But, before the coachman could dismount from his box, he had
tumbled out of the coach, by some means or other; and, running
down to the deserted tenement, began kicking at the door like a
madman.

" Halloa ? " said a little ugly hump-backed man : opening the door
so suddenly, that the doctor, from the very impetus of his last kick,
nearly fell forward into the passage. " What's the matter here ? "

" Matter ! " exclaimed the other, collaring him, without a moment's
reflection. " A good deal. Robbery is the matter."

" There'll be Murder the matter, too," replied the hump-backed
man, coolly '' if you don't take your hands oflF. Do you hear me ? "

" 1 hear you," said the doctor, giving his captive a hearty shake.

A False Alarm.

193

"Where's — confound the fellow, what's his rascally name — Sikes;
that's it. Where's Sikes, you thief? "

The hump-backed man stared, as if in excess of amazement and
indignation ; then, twisting himself, dexterously, from the doctor's
grasp, growled forth a volley of horrid oaths, and retired into tho
house. Before he could shut the door, however, the doctor had passed
into the parlour, without a word of parley. He looked anxiously
round ; not an article of furniture ; not a vestige of anything, animate
or inanimate; not even the position of the cupboards; answered
Oliver's description !

" Now ! " said the hump-backed man, who had watched him keenly,
" what do you mean by coming into my house, in this violent way ?
Do you want to rob me, or to murder me ? Which is it ? "

" Did you ever know a man come out to do either, in a chariot and
pair, you ridiculous old vampire ? " said the irritable doctor.

" What do you want, then ? " demanded the hunchback. " Will
you take yourself off, before I do you a mischief ? Curse you ! "

" As soon as I think proper," said Mr. Losberne, looking into the
oth er parlour ; which, like the first, bore no resemblance whatever to
Oliver's account of it. " I shall find you out, some day, my friend."

" Will you ? " sneered the ill-favoured cripple. " If you ever want
me, I'm hero. I haven't lived here mad and all alone, for five-and-
twenty years, to be scared by you. You shall pay for this ; you shall
pay for this." And so saying, the mis-shapen little demon set up a
yell, and danced upon the ground, as if wild with rage.

" Stupid enough, this," muttered the doctor to himself ; " tho boy
must have made a mistake. Here! Put that in your pocket, and
shut yourself up again." With these words he flung the hunchback a
piece of money, and returned to the carriage.

The man followed to the chariot door, uttering the wildest impre-
cations and curses all the way ; but as Mr. Losberne turned to speak
to the driver, he looked into the carriage, and eyed Oliver for an
instant with a glance so sharp and fierce and at the same time so
furious and vindictive, that, waking or sleeping, he could not forget
it for months afterwards. He continued to utter the most fearful
imprecations, until the driver had resumed his seat ; and when they
were once more on their way, they could see him some distance
behind : beating his feet upon the ground, and tearing his hair, in
transports of real or pretended rage.

" I am an ass ! " said the doctor, after a long silence. " Did you
know that before, Oliver ? "

« No, sir." ' — ____

" Then don't forget it another time."

" An ass," said the doctor again, after a further silence of some
minutes. " Even if it had been the right place, and the right fellows
had been there, what could I have done, single-handed ? And if I
bad had assistance, I see no good that I should have done, except

o

194 Oliver Twist.

leading to my own exposure, and an unavoidable Btatoment of the
manner in wliicli I have Lushed up this business. That would have
served me right, though. I am always involving myself in some
scrape or other, by acting on impulse. It might have done me
good."

Now, the fact was that the excellent doctor had never acted upon
anything but impulse all through his life, and it was no bad compli-
ment to the nature of the impulses which governed him, that so far
from being involved in any peculiar troubles or misfortunes, he had
the warmest respect and esteem of all who knew him. If the truth
must be told, he was a little out of temper, for a minute or two, at
being disappointed in procuring corroborative evidence of Oliver's
story, on the very fii'st occasion on which he had a chance of obtaining
any. He soon came round again, however ; and finding that Oliver's
replies to his questions, were still as straightforwai'd and consistent,
and still delivered with as much apparent sincerity and truth, as they
had ever been, he made up his mind to attach full credence to them,
from that time forth.

As Oliver knew the name of the street in which Mr. Brownlow
resided, they were enabled to drive straight thither. When the coach
turned into it, his heart beat so violently, that he could scarcely draw
his breath.

" Now, my boy, which house is it ? " inquired Mr. Losberne.

" That ! That ! " replied Oliver, pointing eagerly out of the window.
" The white house. Oh ! make haste ! Pray make haste ! I feel as
if I should die : it makes me tremble so."

" Come, come ! " said the good doctor, patting him on the shoulder.
" You will see them directly, and they will be overjoyed to find you
safe and well."

*' Oh ! I hope so ! " cried Oliver. " They were so good to me ; so
very, very good to me."

The coach rolled on. It stopped. No ; that was the wrong house ;
the next door. It went on a few paces, and stopped again. Oliver
looked up at the windows, with tears of happy expectation coursing
down his face.

Alas! the white house was empty and there was a bill in the
window. " To Let."

" Knock at the next door," cried Mr. Losberne, taking Oliver's arm
in his. " What has become of Mr. Brownlow, who used to live in the
adjoining house, do you know ? "

The servant did not know ; but would go and inquire. She pre-
sently returned, and said, that Mr. Brownlow had sold off his goods,
and gone to the West Indies, six weeks before. Oliver clasped his
hands, and sank feebly backward.

" Has his housekeeper gone too ? " inquired Mr. Losberne, after a
moment's pause.

*' Yes, sir ; " replied the seiTant. " The old gentleman, the house-

Another Failure. 195

keeper, and a gentleman who was a friend of Mr. Brownlow's, all went
together."

♦' Then turn towards home again," said Mr. Losbeme to the driver ;
" and don't stop to bait the horses, till you get out of this confounded
London ! "

"The book-stall keeper, sir?" said Oliver. "I know the way
there. See him, pray, sir ! Do see him ! "

" My poor boy, this is disappointment enough for one day," said the
doctor. " Quite enough for both of us. If we go to the book-stall
keeper's, we shall certainly find that he is dead, or has set his house
on fire, or run away. No ; home again straight ! " And in obedience
to the doctor's impulse, home they went.

This bitter disappointment caused Oliver much sorrow and grief,
even in the midst of his happiness ; for he had pleased himself, many
times during his illness, with thinking of all that Mr. Brownlow and
Mrs. Bedwin would say to him : and what delight it would be to tell
them how many long days and nights he had passed in reflecting on
what they had done for him, and in bewailing his cruel separation
from them. The hope of eventually clearing himself with them, too,
and explaining how he had been forced away, had buoyed him up, and
sustained him, under many of his recent trials ; and now, the idea
that they should have gone so far, and carried with them the belief
that he was an impostor and a robber — a belief which might remain
uncontradicted to his dying day — was almost more than he could bear.

The circumstance occasioned no alteration, however, in the behaviour
of his benefactors. After another fortnight, when the fine wai-m
weather had fairly begun, and every tree and flower was putting forth
its young leaves and rich blossoms, they made preparations for quitting
the house at Chertsey, for some months. Sending the plate, which
had 80 excited Fagin's cupidity, to the banker's ; and leaving Giles
and another servant in care of the house, they departed to a cottage
at some distance in the country, and took Oliver with them.

Who can describe the pleasure and delight, the peace of mind and
soft tranquillity, the sickly boy felt in the balmy air, and among the
green hills and rich woods, of an inland village ! "Who can tell how
scenes of peace and quietude sink into the minds of pain-worn dwellers
in close and noisy places, and carry their own freshness, deep into
their jaded hearts ! Men who have lived in crowded, pent-up streets,
through lives of toil, and who have never wished for change ; men, to
whom custom has indeed been second nature, and who have come
almost to love each brick and stone that formed the narrow boundaries
of their daily walks ; even they, with the hand of death upon them,
have been known to yearn at last for one short glimpse of Nature's
face ; and, carried far from the scenes of their old pains and pleasures,
have seemed to pass at once into a new state of being. Crawling
forth, from day to day, to some green sun^y spot, they have had such
memories wakened up within them by the sight of sky, and hill and

196 Oliver Twist.

plain, and glistening water, that a foretaste of heaven itself has soothed
tlieir quick decline, and they have sunk into their tombs, as peacefully
as the sun whose setting they watched from their lonely chamber
window but a few houi-s before, faded from their dim and feeble sight !
The memories which peaceful country scenes call up, are not of this
world, nor of its thoughts and hopes. Their gentle influence may
teach us how to weave fresh garlands for the graves of those wo
loved : may purify our thoughts, and bear down before it old enmity
and hatred ; but beneath all this, there lingers, in the least reflective
mind, a vague and haK-formed consciousness of having held such
feelings long before, in some remote and distant time, which calls up
solemn thoughts of distant times to come, and bends down pride and
worldliness beneath it.

It was a lovely spot to which they repaired. Oliver, whose days
had been spent among squalid crowds, and in the midst of noise and
brawling, seemed to enter on a new existence there. The rose and
honeysuckle clung to the cottage walls ; the ivy crept round the
trunks of the trees; and the garden-flowers perfumed the air with
delicious odours. Hard by, was a little churchyard; not crowded
with tall unsightly gravestones, but full of humble mounds, covered
with fresh turf and moss : beneath which, the old people of the village
lay at rest. Oliver often wandered here; and, thinking of the
wretched grave in which his mother lay, would sometimes sit him
down and sob unseen ; but, when he raised his eyes to the deep sky
overhead, he would cease to think of her as lying in the ground, and
would weep for her, sadly, but without pain.

It was a happy time. The days were peaceful and serene ; the
nights brought with them neither fear nor care ; no languishing in a
wretched prison, or associating with wretched men ; nothing but
pleasant and happy thoughts. Every morning he went to a white-
headed old gentleman, who lived near the little church : who taught
him to read better, and to write : and who spoke so kindly, and took
such pains, that Oliver could never try enough to please him. Then,
he would walk with Mrs. Maylie and Rose, and hear them talk of
books; or perhaps sit near them, in some shady place, and listen
whilst the young lady read : which he could have done, until it grew
too dark to see the letters. Then, he had his own lesson for the next
day to prepare ; and at this, he would work hard, in a little room
which looked into the garden, till evening came slowly on, when the
ladies would walk out again, and he with them : listening with such
pleasure to all they said : and so happy if they wanted a flower that
he could climb to reach, or had forgotten anything he could run to
fetch; that he could never be quick enough about it. When it
became quite dark, and they returned home, the young lady would sit
down to the piano, and play some pleasant air, or sing, in a low and
gentle voice, some old song which it pleased her aunt to hear. There
would be no candles lighted at such times as these ; and Oliver would

Happy Days. \gy

git by one of the windows, listening to the sweet music, in a perfect
rapture.

And when Sunday came, how differently the day was spent, from
any way in which he had ever spent it yet 1 and how happily too ;
like all the other days in that most happy time I There was the
little church, in the morning, with the green leaves fluttering at the
windows : the birds singing without : and the sweet-smelling air
stealing in at the low porch, and filling the homely building with
its fragrance. The poor people were so neat and clean, and knelt so
reverently in prayer, that it seemed a pleasure, not a tedious duty,
their assembling there together; and though the singing might bo
rude, it was real, and sounded more musical (to Oliver's ears at least)
than any he had ever heard in church before. Then, there were the
walks as usual, and many calls at the clean houses of the labouring
men; and at night, Oliver read a chapter or two from the Bible,
which he had been studying all the week, and in the performance of
which duty he felt more proud and pleased, than if he had been the
clergyman himself.

In the morning, Oliver would be a-foot by six o'clock, roaming the
fields, and plundering the hedges, far and wide, for nosegays of wild
flowers, with which he would return laden, home ; and which it took
groat care and consideration to arrange, to the best advantage, for the
embellishment of the breakfast-table. There was fresh groundsel,
too, for Miss May lie's birds, with which Oliver, who had been study-
ing the subject under the able tuition of the village clerk, would
decorate the cages, in the most approved taste. When the birds were
made all spruce and smart for the day, there was usually some little
commission of charity to execute in the village ; or, failing that, there
was rare cricket-playing, sometimes, on the green; or, failing that,
there was always something to do in the garden, or about the plants,
to which Oliver (who had studied this science also, under the same
master, who was a gardener by trade,) applied himself with hearty
good-will, until Miss Rose made her appearance : when there were a
thousand commendations to be bestowed on all he had done.

So three months glided away ; three months which, in the life of
the most blessed and favoured of mortals, might have been umningled
happiness, and which, in Oliver's, were true felicity. With the purest
and most amiable generosity on one side ; and the truest, warmest,
soul-felt gratitude on the other ; it is no wonder that, by the end of
tliat short time, Oliver Twist had become completely domesticated
with the old lady and her niece, and that the fervent attachment of
his young and sensitive heart, was repaid by their pride in, and
attachment to, himself.

CHAPTER XXXin.

WHEREIN THE HAPPINESS OP OLIVER AND HIS FRIENDS, EXPERIENCES A

SUDDEN CHECK.

SpRiNa flew swiftly by, and summer came. If the village tad been
beautiful at first it was now in the full glow and luxuriance of its
richness. The great trees, which had looked shrunken and bare in
the earlier months, had now burst into ^strong life and health ; and
stretching forth their green arras over the thirsty ground, converted
open and naked spots into choice nooks, where was a deep and pleasant
shade from which to look upon the wide prospect, steeped in sunshine,
which lay stretched beyond. The earth had donned her mantle of
brightest green ; and shed her richest perfumes abroad. It was the
prime and vigour of the year ; all things were glad and flourishing.

Still, the same quiet life went on at the little cottage, and the same
cheerful serenity prevailed among its inmates. Oliver had long since
grown stout and ^healthy ; but health or sickness made no difference
in his warm feelings to those about him, though they do in the
feelings of a great many people. He was still the same gentle,
attached, affectionate creature that he had been when pain and suffer-
ing had wasted his strength, and when he was dependent for every
slight attention and comfort on those who tended him.

One beautiful night, they had taken a longer walk than was
customary with them : for the day had been unusually warm, and
there was a brilliant moon, and a light wind had sprung up, which
was unusually refreshing. Rose had been in high spirits, too, and
they had walked on, in merry conversation, until they had far exceeded
their ordinary bounds. Mrs. Maylie being fatigued, they returned
more slowly home. The young lady merely throwing off her simple
bonnet, sat down to the piano as usual. After running abstractedly
over the keys for a few minutes, she fell into a low and very solemn
air ; and as she played it, they heard a sound as if she were weeping.

" Rose, my dear ! " said the elder lady.

Rose made no reply, but played a little quicker, as though the
words had roused her from some painful thoughts.

" Rose, my love ! " cried Mrs. Maylie, rising hastily, and bending
over her. " What is this ? In tears ! My dear child, what dis-
tresses yon ? "

" Nothing, aunt ; nothing," replied the young lady. " I don't know
what it is ; I can't describe it ; but I feel "

" Not ill, my love ? " interposed Mrs. Maylie.

" No, no ! Oh, not ill ! " replied Rose : shuddering as though some
deadly chillness were passing over her, while she spoke ; " I shall be
better presently. Close the window, pi-ay I "

A Real Alarm. 199

Oliver hastened to comply with her request. The young lady,
making an effort to recover her cheerfulness, strove to play some
livelier tune ; but her fingers dropped powerless on the keys. Cover-
ing her face with her hands, she sank upon a sofa, and gave vent to
the tears whicli she was now unable to repress.

" My child ! " said the elderly lady, folding her arms about her, " I
never saw you so before."

" I would not alarm you if I could avoid it," rejoined Kose ; " but
indeed I have tried very hard, and cannot help this. I fear I am ill,
aunt."

She was, indeed ; for, when candles were brought, they saw that in
the very short time which had elapsed since their return home, the
hue of her countenance had changed to a marble whiteness. Its
expression had lost nothing of its beauty ; but it was changed ; and
there was an anxious, haggard look about the gentle face, which it
had never worn before. Another minute, and it was suffused with a
crimson flush : and a heavy wildness came over the soft blue eye.
Again this disappeared, like the shadow thrown by a passing cloud ;
and she was once more deadly pale.

Oliver, who watched the old lady anxiously, observed that she was
alarmed by these appearances ; and so in truth, was he ; but seeing
that she affected to make light of them, he endeavoured to do the
same, and they so far succeeded, that when Kose was persuaded by
her aunt to retire for the night, she was in better spirits ; and appeared
even in better health : assuiing them that she felt certain she should
rise in the morning, quite well.

" I hope," said Oliver, when Mrs. Maylie returned, " that nothing
is the matter ? She don't look well to-night, but "

The old lady motioned to him not to speak; and sitting herself
down in a dark corner of the room, remained silent for some time.
At length, she said, in a trembling voice :

" I hope not, Oliver. I have been very happy with her for some
years : too happy, perhaps. It may be time that I should meet with
some misfortune ; but I hope it is not this."

" What ? " inquired Oliver.

" The heavy blow," said the old lady, " of losing the dear girl who
has so long been my comfort and happiness."

" Oh ! God forbjd ! " exclaimed Oliver, hastily.

" Amen to that, my child ! " said the old lady, wringing her hands.

" Surely there is no danger of anything so dreadful ? ' said Oliver.
" Two hours ago, she was quite well."

" She is very ill now," rejoined Mrs. Maylie ; " and will be worse,
I am sure. My dear, dear Rose! Oh, what should I do without
her ! "

She gave way to such great grief, that Oliver, suppressing his own
emotion, ventured to remonstrate with her ; and to beg, earnestly, that,
for the sake of the dear young lady herself, she would be more calm.

000 Oliver Twist

" And consider, ma'am," said Oliver, as the tears forced themselves
into his eyes, despite of his efforts to the contrary. " Oh ! consider
how young and good she is, and what pleasure and comfort she gives
to all about her. I am sure — certain — quite certain — that, for your
sake, who are so good yourself ; and for her own ; and for the sake of
all she makes so happy ; she will not die. Heaven will never let her
die so young."

" Hush ! " said Mrs. Maylie, laying her hand on Oliver's head.
" You think like a child, poor boy. But you teach me my duty, not-
withstanding. I had forgotten it for a moment, Oliver, but I hope I
may be pardoned, for I am old, and have seen enough of illness and
death to know the agony of separation from the objects of our love. I
have seen enough, too, to know that it is not always the youngest and
best who are spared to those that love them ; but this should give us
comfort in our sorrow ; for Heaven is just ; and such things teach us,
impressively, that there is a brighter world than this ; and that the
passage to it is speedy. God's will be done ! I love her ; and He
knows how well ! "

Oliver was surprised to see that as Mrs. Maylie said these words,
she checked her lamentations as though by one effort ; and drawing
herself up as she spoke, became composed and firm. He was still
more astonished to find that this fiimness lasted ; and that, under all
the care and watching which ensued, Mrs. Maylie was ever ready and
collected : performing all the duties which devolved upon her, steadily,
and, to all external appearance, even cheerfully. But he was young,
and did not know what strong minds are capable of, under trying cir-
cumstances. How should he, when their possessors so seldom know
themselves ?

An anxious night ensued. When morning came, Mrs. Maylie's
predictions were but too well verified. Eose was in the first stage of
a high and dangerous fever.

" We must be active, Oliver, and not give way to useless grief,"
said Mrs. Maylie, laying her finger on her lip, as she looked steadily
into his face ; " this letter must be sent, with all possible expedition,
to Mr. Losberne. It must be carried to the market-town : which is
not more than four miles off, by the footpath across the fields : and
thence dispatched, by an express on horseback, straight to Chertsey.
The people at the inn will undertake to do this : and I can trust to
you to see it done, I know."

Oliver could make no reply, but looked his anxiety to be gone at
once.

" Here is another letter," said Mrs. Maylie, pausing to reflect ; " but
whether to send it now, or wait until I see how Eose goes on, I scarcely
know. I would not forward it, unless I feared the worst."

" Is it for Chertsey, too, ma'am ? " inquired Oliver : impatient to
execute his commission, and holding out his trembling hand for the
letter.

At ike George Inn, 20I

" No," replied the old lady, giving it to him mechanically. Oliver
glanced at it, and saw that it was directed to Harry Maylie, Esquire,
at some great lord's house in the country ; where, he could not make
out.

" Shall it go, ma'am ? " asked Oliver, looking up, impatiently.

*' I think not," replied Mrs. Maylie, taking it back. " I will wait
until to-morrow."

With these words, she gave Oliver her purse, and ho started oflF,
without more delay, at the greatest speed he could muster.

Swiftly he ran across the fields, and down the little lanes which
sometimes divided them: now almost hidden by the high com on
either side, and now emerging on an open field, where the mowers and
haymakers were busy at their work : nor did he stop once, save now
and then, for a few seconds, to recover breath, until he came, in a
great heat, and covered with dost, on the little market-place of the
market-town.

Here he paused, and looked about for the inn. There were a white
bank, and a red brewery, and a yellow town-hall ; and in one comer
there was a large house, with all the wood about it painted green :
before which was the sign of " The George." To this he hastened, as
soon as it caught his eye.

He spoke to a postboy who was dozing under the gateway ; and
who, after hearing what he wanted, referred him to the ostler ; who
after hearing all he had to say again, referred him to the landlord ;
who was a tall gentleman in a blue neckcloth, a white hat, drab
breeches, and boots with tops to match, leaning against a pump by the
stable-door, picking his teeth with a silver toothpick.

This gentleman walked with much deliberation into the bar to make
out the bill : which took a long time making out : and after it was
ready, and paid, a horse had to be saddled, and a man to be dressed,
which took up ten good minutes more. Meanwhile Oliver was in such
a desperate state of impatience and anxiety, that he felt as if he could
have jumped upon the horse himself, and galloped away, full tear, to
the next stage. At length, all was ready ; and the little parcel having
been handed up, with many injunctions and entreaties for its speedy
deliveiy, the man set spurs to his horse, and rattling over the uneven
paving of the market-place, was out of the town, and galloping along
the turnpike-road, in a couple of minutes.

As it was something to feel certain that assistance was sent for, and

. that no time had been lost, Oliver hurried up the inn-yard, with a

somewhat lighter heart. He was turning out of the gateway when he

accidentally stumbled against a tall man wrapped in a cloak, who was

at that moment coming out of the inn door.

" Hah ! " cried the man, fixing his eyes on Oliver, and suddenly
recoiling. " What the devil's this ? "

" I beg youi* pardon, sir," said Oliver ; " I was in a great hurry to
get home, and didn't see you were ooming."

202 Oliver Twist.

'• Deatli ! " muttored the man to himself, glaring at the boy with his
large dark eyes. " Who would have thought it ! Grind him to ashes 1
He'd start up from a stone coffin, to come in my way ! "

"I am sorry," stammered Oliver, confused by the strange man's
wild look. " I hope I have not hurt you ! "

" Eot you ! " murmured the man, in a horrible passion ; between his
clenched teeth ; " if I had only had the courage to say the word, I
might have been free of you in a night. Curses on your head, and
black death on your heart, you imp ! What are you doing here ? "

The man shook his fist, as he uttered these words incoherently.
Ho advanced towards Oliver, as if with the intention of aiming a
blow at him, but fell violently on the ground : writhing and foaming,
in a fit.

Oliver gazed, for a moment, at the struggles of the madman (for
such he supposed him to be) ; and then darted into the house for help.
Having seen him safely carried into the hotel, he turned his face
homewards, running as fast as he could, to make up for lost time :
and recalling with a great deal of astonishment and some fear, the
extraordinary behaviour of the person from whom he had just parted.

The circumstance did not dwell in his recollection long, however :
for when he reached the cottage, there was enough to occupy his
mind, and to drive all considerations of self completely from his
memory.

Eose Maylie had rapidly grown worse ; before midnight she was
delirious. A medical practitioner, who resided on the spot, was in
constant attendance upon her ; and after first seeing the patient, he
had taken Mrs. Maylie aside, and pronounced her disorder to be one
of a most alarming nature. " In fact," he said, " it would be little
short of a miracle, if she recovered."

How often did Oliver start from his bed that night, and stealing
out, with noiseless footstep, to the staircase, listen for the slightest
sound from the sick chamber ! How often did a tremble shake his
frame, and cold di-ops of terror start upon his brow, when a sudden
trampling of feet caused him to fear that something too dreadful to
think of, had even then occurred ! And what had been the fervency
of all the prayers he had ever muttered, compared with those he
poured forth, now, in the agony and passion of his supplication for the
life and health of the gentle creature, who was tottering on the deep
grave's verge !

Oh ! the suspense, the fearful, acute suspense, of standing idly by
while the life of one we dearly love, is trembling in the balance!
Oh ! the racking thoughts that crowd upon the mind, and make the
heart beat violently, and the breath come thick, by the force of the
images they conjure up before it ; the desperate anxiety to he doing
something to relieve the pain, or lessen the danger, which we have no
power to alleviate; the sinking of soul and spirit, which tlie sad
remembrance of our helplessness produces ; what tortures can equal

An Anxious Time. 203

these ; what reflections or endeavours can, in the full tide and fever of
the time, allay them !

Morning came ; and the little cottage was lonely and still. People
spoke in whispers ; anxious faces appeared at the gate, from time to
time ; women and children went away in tears. All the livelong day,
and for hours after it had grown dai-k, Oliver paced softly up and
down the garden, raising his eyes every instant to the sick chamher,
and shuddering to see the darkened window, looking as if death lay
stretched inside. Late at night, Mr. Losbeme arrived. " It is hard,"
said the good doctor, turning away as he spoke ; " so young ; so much
beloved ; but there is very little hope."

Another morning. The sun shone brightly: as brightly as if it
looked upon no misery or care ; and, with every leaf and flower in full
bloom about her : with life, and health, and sounds and sights of joy,
surrounding her on every side : the fair young creature lay, wasting
fast. Oliver crept away to the old churchyard, and sitting down on
one of the green mounds, wept and prayed for her, in silence.

There was such peace and beauty in the scene ; so much of bright-
ness and mirth in the sunny landscape ; such blithesome music in the
songs of the summer birds ; such freedom in the rapid flight of the
rook, careering overhead ; so much of life and joyousness in all ; that,
when the boy raised his aching eyes, and looked about, the thought
instinctively occnn*ed to him, that this was not a time for death ; that
Eose could surely never die when humbler things were all so glad
and gay ; that graves were for cold and cheerless winter : not for sun-
light and fragrance. He almost thought that shrouds were for the
old and shrunken; and that they never wrapped the young and
graceful form in their ghastly folds.

A knell from the church bell broke harshly on these youthful
thoughts. Another 1 Again 1 It was tolling for the funeral service.
A group of humble mourners entered the gate : wearing white
favours ; for the corpse was young. They stood uncovered by a
grave ; and there was a mother — a mother once — among the weeping
train. But the sun shone brightly, and the birds sang on.

Oliver turned homeward, thinking on the many kindnesses he had
received from the young lady, and wishing that the time could come
over again, that he might never cease showing her how grateful and
attached he was. He had no cause for self-reproach on the score of
neglect, or want of thought, for he had been devoted to her service ;
and yet a hundred little occasions rose up before him, on which he
fancied he might have been more zealous, and more earnest, and
wished he had been. We need be careful how we deal with those
about us, when every death carries to some small circle of survivors,
thoughts of so much omitted, and so little done — of so many things
forgotten, and so many more which might have been repaired ! There
is no remorse so deep as that which is unavailing ; if we would be
spared its tortures, let us remember this, in time.

204 Oliver Twist.

When he reached home Mrs. May lie was sitting in the little
parlour. Oliver's heart sank at sight of her ; for she had never left
the bedside of her niece ; and he trembled to think what change could
have driven her away. He learnt that she had fallen into a deep
sleep, from which she would waken, either to recovery and life, or to
bid them farewell, and die.

They sat, listening, and afraid to speak, for hours. The untasted
meal was removed, with looks which showed that their thoughts were
elsewhere, they watched the sun as ho sank lower and lower, and, at
length, cast over sky and earth those brilliant hues which herald his de-
parture. Their quick ears caught the sound of an approaching footstep.
They both involuntarily darted to the door, as Mr. Losberne entered.

" What of Eose ? " cried the old lady. " Tell me at once ! I can
bear it ; anything but suspense ! Oh, tell me ! in the name of
Heaven ! "

" You must compose yourself," said the doctor, supporting her.
" Be calm, my dear ma'am, pray."

" Let me go, in God's name ! My dear child ! She is dead ! She
is dying ! "

" No ! " cried the doctor, passionately. " As He is good and
merciful, she will live to bless us all, for years to come."

The lady fell upon her knees, and tried to fold her hands together ;
but the energy which had supported her so long, fled up to Heaven
with her first thanksgiving ; and she sank into the friendly arms
which were extended to receive her.

CHAPTEK XXXIV.

CONTAINS SOME INTRODUCTORY PARTICULARS RELATIVE TO A YOUNO
GENTLEMAN WHO NOW ARRIVES UPON THE SCENE ; AND A NEW
ADVENTURE WHICH HAPPENED TO OUVER.

It was almost too much happiness to bear. Oliver felt stunned and
stupefied by the unexpected intelligence ; he could not weep, or speak,
or rest. He had scarcely the power of understanding anything that
had i^assed, until, after a long ramble in the quiet evening air, a burst
of tears came to his relief, and he seemed to awaken, all at once, to a
full sense of the joyful change that had occurred, and the almost
insupportable load of anguish which had been taken from his breast.

The night was fast closing in, when he returned homeward : laden
with flowers which he had culled, with peculiar care, for the adorn-
ment of the sick chamber. As he walked briskly along the road, ho
heard behind him, the noise of some vehicle, approaching at a furious
pace. Looking round, he saw that it was a post-chaise, driven at great

Mr. Harry, 205

speed ; and as the horses were galloping, and the road was narrow,
he stood leaning against a gate until it should have passed him.

As it dashed on, Oliver caught a glimpse of a man in a white
nightcap, whose face seemed familiar to him, although his view was
so brief that he could not identify the person. In another second or
two, the nightcap was thrust out of the chaise-window, and a
stentorian voice bellowed to the driver to stop : which he did, as soon
as he could pull up his horses. Then, the nightcap once again
appeared : and the same voice called Oliver by his name.

" Here ! " cried the voice. " Oliver, what's the news ? Miss Rose !
Master 0-li-ver ! "

" Is it you, Giles ? " cried Oliver, running up to the chaise-door.

Giles popped out his nightcap again, preparatory to making some
reply, when he was suddenly pulled back by a young gentleman who
occupied the other comer of the chaise, and who eagerly demanded
what was the news.

" In a word ! " cried the gentleman, " Better or worse ? "

" Better — much better ! " replied Oliver, hastily.

" Thank Heaven ! " exclaimed the gentleman. " You are sure ? "

" Quite, sir," replied Oliver. " The change took place only a few
hours ago ; and Mr. Losberne says, that all danger is at an end."

The gentleman said not another word, but, opening the chaise-door,
leaped out, and taking Oliver hurriedly by the arm, led him aside.

" You are quite certain ? There is no possibility of any mistake on
your part, my boy, is there ? " demanded the gentleman in a tremulous
voice. " Do not deceive me, by awakening hopes that are not to be
fulfilled."

" I would not for the world, sir," replied Oliver. " Indeed you
may believe me. Mr. Losberne's words were, that she would live to
bless us all for many years to come. I heard him say so."

The tears stood in Oliver's eyes as he recalled the scene which was
the beginning of so much happiness ; and the gentleman turned his
face away, and remained silent, for some minutes. Oliver thought ho
heard him sob, more than once ; but he feared to internipt him by any
fresh remark — for he could well guess what his feelings were — and so
stood apart, feigning to be occupied with his nosegay.

All this time, Mr. Giles, with the white nightcap on, had been
sitting on the steps of the chaise, supporting an elbow on each knee,
and wiping his eyes with a blue cotton pocket-handkerchief dotted
with white spots. That the honest fellow had not been feigning
emotion, was abundantly demonstrated by the very red eyes with
which he regarded the young gentleman, when he turned round and
addressed him.

" I think you had better go on to my mother's in the chaise, Giles,"
said he. " I would rather walk slowly on, so as to gain a little time
before I see her. You can say I am coming."

" I beg your pardon, Mr. Harry," said Giles : giving a final polish

2o6 Oliver Tivist.

to his ruffled countenance with the handkerchief ; " but if you would
leave the postboy to say that, I should be very much obliged to you.
It wouldn't be proper for the maids to see me in this state, sir ; I
should never have any more authority with them if they did."

" Well," rejoined Harry Maylie, smiling, " you can do as yoxi like.
Let him go on with the luggage, if you wish it, and do you follow
with us. Only first exchange that nightcap for some more appropriate
covering, or we shall be taken for madmen."

Mr. Giles, reminded of his unbecoming costume, snatched off and
pocketed his nightcap ; and substituted a hat, of grave and sober
shape, which he took out of the chaise. This done, the postboy drove
off ; Giles, Mr. Maylie, and Olivei*, followed at their leisure.

As they walked along, Oliver glanced from time to time with much
interest and curiosity at the new-comer. He seemed about five-and-
twenty years of age, and was of the middle height ; his countenance
was frank and handsome ; and his demeanour easy and prepossessing.
Notwithstanding the difference between youth and age, he bore so
strong a likeness to the old lady, that Oliver would have had no great
difficulty in imagining their relationship, if he had not already spoken
of her as his mother.

Mrs. Maylie was anxiously waiting to receive her son when ho
reached the cottage. The meeting did not take place without great
emotion on both sides.

" Mother ! " whispered the young man ; " why did you not write
before ? "

" I did," replied Mrs. Maylie ', " but, on reflection, I determined to
keep back the letter until I had heard Mr. Losberne's opinion."

" But why," said the young man, " why run the chance of that
occurring which so nearly happened ? If Eose had — I cannot utter
that word now — if this illness had terminated differently, how could
you ever have forgiven yourself! How could I ever have known
happiness again ! "

" If that Aad been the case, Harry," said Mrs. Maylie, " I fear your
happiness would have been effectually blighted, and that your arrival
here, a day sooner or a day later, would have been of very, very little
import."

" And who can wonder if it be so, mother ? " rejoined the young
man; "or why should I say, ifl — It is — it is — you know it, mother
— ^you must know it ! "

"I know that she deserves the best and purest love the heart of
man can offer," said Mrs. Maylie ; " I know that the devotion and
affection of her nature require no ordinary return, but one that shall
be deep and lasting. If I did not feel this, and know, besides, that
a changed behaviour in one she Iftved would break her heart, I should
not feel my task so difficult of performance, or have to encounter so
many straggles in my own bosom, when I take what seems to me to
be the strict line of duty."

An Avowal of Love. 207

" This is unkind, mother," said Harry. " Do you still suppose that
I am a boy ignorant of my own mind, and mistaking the impulses of
my own soul ? "

" I think, my dear son," returned Mrs. Maylie, laying her hand
upon his shoiilder, " that youth has many generous impulses which do
not last ; and that among them are some, which, being gratified, become
only the more fleeting. Above all, I think," said the lady, fixing hor
eyes on her son's face, " that if an enthusiastic, ardent, and ambitious
man marry a wife on whose name there is a stain, which, tliough it
originate in no fault of hers, may be visited by cold and sordid people
upon her, and upon his children also : and, in exact proportion to his
success in the world, be cast in his teeth, and made the subject of
sneers against him : he may, no matter how generous and good his
nature, one day repent of the connection he formed in early life. And
she may have the pain of knowing that he does so."

" Mother," said the young man, impatiently, " he would be a selfish
brute, unworthy alike of the name of man and of the woman you
describe, who acted thus."

" You think so now, Harry," replied his mother.

" And ever will ! " said the young man. " The mental agony I
have suffered, during the last two days, wrings from me the avowal to
you of a passion which, as you well know, is not one of yesterday, nor
one I have lightly formed. On Eose, sweet, gentle girl ! my heart is
set, as firmly as ever heart of man was set on woman. I have no
thought, no view, no hope in life, beyond her ; and if you oppose me
in this great stake, you take my peace and happiness in your hands,
and cast them to the wind. Mother, think better of this, and of me,
and do not disregard the happiness of which you seem to think so
little."

" Harry," said Mrs. Maylie, " it is because I think so much of warm
and sensitive hearts, that I would spare them from being wounded.
But we have said enough, and more than enough, on this matter, just
now."

" Let it rest with Eose, then," interposed Harry. " You will not
press these overstrained opinions of yours, so far, as to throw any
obstacle in my way ? "

" I will not," rejoined Mrs. Maylie ; " but I would have you
consider "

" I have considered ! " was the impatient reply ; " Mother, I have
considered, years and years. I have considered, ever since I have
been capable of serious reflection. My feelings remain unchanged, as
they ever will ; and why should I suffer the pain of a delay in giving
them vent, which can be productive of no earthly good ? No ! Before
I leave this place, Eose shall hear me."

" She shall," said Mrs. Maylie.

" There is something in your manner, which would almost imply
that she will hear me coldly, mother," said the young man.

2o8 Oliver Tivist

" Not coldly," rejoined the old lady ; " far from it."

" How then ? " urged the young man. " She has formed no other
attachment ? "

"No, indeed," replied his mother; "you have, or I mistake, too
strong a hold on her affections already. What I would say," resumed
the old lady, stopping her son as he was about to speak, "is this.
Before you stake your all on this chance ; before you suffer yourself
to bo carried to the highest point of hope ; reflect for a few moments,
my dear child, on Eose's history, and consider what effect the know-
ledge of her doubtful birth may have on her decision : devoted as sho
is to us, with all the intensity of her noble mind, and with that perfect
sacrifice of self which, in all matters, great or trifling, has always
been her characteristic."

" What do you mean ? "

" That I leave you to discover," replied Mrs. Maylie. " I must go
back to her. God bless you ! "

" I shall see you again to-night ? " said the young man, eagerly.

" By-and-by," replied the lady ; " when I leave Rose "

" You will tell her I am here ? " said Harry.

" Of coxirse," replied Mrs. Maylie.

" And say how anxious I have been, and how much I have suffered,
and how I long to see her. You will not refuse to do this, mother ? "

" No," said the old lady ; " I will tell her all." And pressing her
son's hand, affectionately, she hastened from the room.

Mr. Losberne and Oliver had remained at another end of the apart-
ment while this hurried conversation was proceeding. The former
now held out his hftnd to Harry Maylie ; and hearty salutations were
exchanged between them. The doctor then communicated, in reply
to multifarious questions from his young friend, a precise account of
his patient's situation ; which was quite as consolatory and full of
promise, as Oliver's statement had encouraged him to hope ; and to
the whole of which, Mr. Giles, who affected to be busy about the
luggage, listened with greedy ears.

" Have you shot anything particular, lately, Giles ? " inquired the
doctor, when he had concluded.

" Nothing particular, sir," replied Mr. Giles, colouring up to the
eyes.

" Noc catching any thieves, nor identifying any housebreakers ? "
said the doctor.

" None at all, sir," replied Mr. Giles, with much gravity.

" Well," said the doctor, " I am sorry to hear it, because you do
that sort of thing admirably. Pray, how is Brittles ? "

" The boy is very well, sir," said Mr. Giles, recovering his usual
tone of patronage ; " and sends his respectful duty, sir."

"That's well," said the doctor. "Seeing you here, reminds me,
Mr. Giles, that on the day before that on which I was called away so
hurriedly, I executed, at the request of your good mistress, a small

A Pleasant Party. 209

commission in ycur favour. Just step into this corner a moment)
will you?"

Mr. Giles walked into the comer with much importance, and some
wonder, and was honoured with a short whispering conference with
the doctor, on the termination of which, he made a great many bows,
and retired with steps of unusual stateliness. The subject matter of
this conference was not disclosed in the parlour, but the kitchen was
speedily enlightened concerning it ; for Mr. Giles walked straight
thither, and having called for a mug of ale, announced, with an aii- of
majesty, which was highly effective, that it had pleased his mistress,
in consideration of his gallant behaviour on the occasion of that
attempted robbery, to deposit, in the local savings-bank, the sum of
five and twenty pounds, for his sole use and benefit. At this, the two
women-servants lifted up their hands and eyes, and supposed that Mr.
Giles would begin to be quite proud now; whereunto Mr. Giles,
pulling out his shirt-frill, replied, " No, no ; " and that if they
observed that he was at all haughty to his inferiors, he would thank
them to tell him so. And then he made a great many other remarks,
no less illustrative of his humility, which were received with equal
favour and applause, and were, withal, as original and as much to the
purpose, as the remarks of great men commonly are.

Above stairs, the remainder of the evening passed cheerfully away ;
for the doctor was in high spirits ; and however fatigued or thoughtful
Harry Maylie might have been at first, he was not proof against the
worthy gentleman's good humour, which displayed itself in a great
variety of sallies and professional recollections, and an abundance of
small jokes, which struck Oliver as being the drollest things he had
ever heard, and caused him to laugh proportionately : to the evident
satisfaction of the doctor, who laughed immoderately at himself, and
made Harry laugh almost as heartily, by the very force of sympathy.
So, they were as pleasant a party as, under the circumstances, they
could well have been ; and it was late before they retired, with light
and thankful hearts, to take that rest of which, after the doubt and
suspense they had recently undergone, they stood much in need.

Oliver rose next morning, in better heart, and went about his usual
early occupations, with more hope and pleasure than he had known
for many days. The birds were once more hung out, to sing, in Iheir
old places ; and the sweetest wild flowers that could be found, were
once more gathered to gladden Kose with their beauty. The melan-
choly which had seemed to the sad eyes of the anxious boy to hang,
for days past, over every object, beautiful as all were, was dispelled
by magic. The dew seemed to sparkle more brightly on the green
leaves ; the air to rustle among them with a sweeter music ; and the
sky itself to look more blue and bright. Such is the influence which
the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance
of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men,
and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right ; but the sombre

p

210 Oliver Twist.

colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts.
The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision.

It is worthy of remark, and Oliver did not fail to note it at the time,
that his morning expeditions were no longer made alone. Harry
Maylie, after the very first morning when ho met Oliver coming laden
liomc, was seized with such a passion for flowers, and displayed such
a taste in their arrangement, as left his young companion far behind.
If Oliver were behindhand in these respects, however, he knew where
the best were to be found ; and morning after morning they scoured
the country together, and brought home the fairest that blossomed.
The window of the young lady's chamber was opened now ; for she
loved to feel the rich summer air stream in, and revive her with its
freshness ; but there always stood in water, just inside the lattice, one
particular little bunch, which was made up with great care, every
morning. Oliver could not help noticing that the withered flowers
were never thrown away, although the little vase was regularly
replenished ; nor, could he help observing, that whenever the doctor
came into the garden, he invariably cast his eyes up to that particular
corner, and nodded his head most expressively, as he set forth on his
morning's walk. Pending these observations, the days were flying
by ; and Eose was rapidly recovering.

Nor did Oliver's time hang heavy on his hands, although the young
lady had not yet left her chamber, and there were no evening walks,
save now and then, for a short distance, with Mrs. Maylie. He
applied himself, with redoubled assiduity, to the instructions of the
white-headed old gentleman, and laboured so hard that his quick
progress surprised even himself. It was while he was engaged in this
pursuit, that he was greatly startled and distressed by a most unex-
pected occurrence.

The little room in which he was accustomed to sit, when busy at
his books, was on the ground-floor, at the back of the house. It was
quite a cottage-room, with a lattice-window: around which were
clusters of jessamine and honeysuckle, that crept over the casement,
and filled the place with their delicious perfume. It looked into a
garden, whence a wicket-gate opened into a small paddock; all
beyond, was fine meadow-land and wood. There was no other
dwelling near, in that direction ; and the prospect it commanded was
very extensive.

One beautiful evening, when the first shades of twilight were
beginning to settle upon the earth, Oliver sat at this window, intent
upon his books. He had been poring over them for some time ; and,
as the day had been uncommonly sultry, and he had exerted himself
a great deal, it is no disparagement to the authors, whoever they may
have been, to say, that gradually and by slow degrees, he fell asleep.

There is a kind of sleep that steals upon us sometimes, which, while
it liolds the body prisoner, does not free the mind from a sense of
things about it, and enable it to ramble at its pleasure. So far as an

Oliver Sleep-waking. 2il

overpowering heaviness, a prostration of strength, and an utter in-
ability to control our thoughts or power of motion, can be called sleep,
this is it ; and yet, we have a consciousness of all that is going on
about us, and, if we dream at such a time, words which are really
spoken, or sounds which really exist at the moment, accommodate
themselves with surprising readiness to our visions, until reality and
imagination become so strangely blended that it is afterwards almost
matter of impossibility to separate the two. Nor is this, the most
striking phenomenon incidental to such a state. It is an imdoubted
fact, that although our senses of touch and sight be for the time dead,
yet our sleeping thoughts, and the visionary scenes that pass before
us, will be influenced and materially influenced, by the mere silent
presence of some external object ; which may not have been near us
when we closed our eyes : and of whose vicinity we have had no
waking consciousness.

Oliver knew, perfectly well, that he was in his own little room ;
that his books were lying on the table before him ; that the sweet air
was stii-ring among the creeping plants outside. And yet he was
asleep. Suddenly, the scene changed ; the air became close and
confined ; and he thought, with a glow of terror, that he was in the
Jew's house again. There sat the hideous old man, in his accustomed
corner, pointing at him, and whispering to another man, with his face
averted, who sat beside him.

" Hush, my dear ! " ho thought he heard the Jew say ; " it is he,
sure enough. Come away."

" He ! " the other man seemed to answer ; " could I mistake him,
think you ? If a crowd of ghosts were to put themselves into his
exact shape, and he stood amongst them, there is something that
would tell me how to point him out. If you buried him fifty feet
deep, and took me across his grave, I fancy I should know, if there
wasn't a mark above it, that he lay bui-ied there ? "

The man seemed to say this, with such dreadful hatred, that Oliver
awoke with the fear, and started up.

Good Heaven ! what was that, which sent the blood tingling to his
heart, and deprived him of his voice, and of power to move I There
— there — at the window — close before him — so close, that he could
liave almost touched him before he started back : with his eyes peering
into the room, and meeting his : there stood the Jew ! And beside
him, white with rage or fear, or both, were the scowling features of
the very man who had accosted him in the inn-yard.

It was but an instant, a glance, a flash, before his eyes ; and they
were gone. But they had recognised him, and he them ; and their
look was as firmly impressed upon his memory, as if it had been
deeply carved in stone, and set before him from his birth. He stood
transfixed for a moment ; then, leaping from the window into the
garden, called loudly for help.

CHAPTER XXXV.

CONTAINING THE UNSATI8FACT0UY RESULT OF OLIVEr's ADVENTURE ; AND
A CONVERSATION OF SOME IMPORTANCE BETWEEN HARRY MAYLIE
AND ROSE.

When the inmates of the house, attracted by Oliver's cries, hurried
to the spot from which they proceeded, they found him, pale and
agitated, pointing in the direction of the meadows behind the house,
and scarcely able to articulate the words, " The Jew ! the Jew ! "

Mr. Giles was at a loss to comprehend what this outcry meant ; but
Harry Maylie, whose perceptions were something quicker, and who
had heard Oliver's history from his mother, understood it at once.

" What direction did he take ? " he asked, catching up a heavy stick
which was standing in a corner.

" That," replied Oliver, pointing out the course the man had taken ;
" I missed them in an instant."

" Then, they are in the ditch ! " said Harry. " Follow I And keep
as near me, as you can." So saying, he sprang over the hedge, and
darted off with a speed which rendered it matter of exceeding difficulty
for the others to keep near him.

Giles followed as well as he could ; and Oliver followed too ; and in
the course of a minute or two, Mr. Losberne, who had been out walk-
ing, and just then returned, tumbled over the hedge after them, and
picking himself up with more agility than he could have been supposed
to possess, stnick into the same course at no contemptible speed,
shouting all the M'hile, most prodigiously, to know what was the
matter.

On they all went ; nor stopped they once to breathe, until the leader,
striking off into an angle of the field indicated by Oliver, began to
search, narrowly, the ditch and hedge adjoining ; which afforded time
for the remainder of the party to come up ; and for Oliver to com-
municate to Mr. Losberne the circvmistances that had led to so vigorous
a pursuit.

The search was all in vain. There were not even the traces of
recent footsteps, to bo seen. They stood now, on the summit of a
little hill, commanding the open fields in every direction for three or
four miles. There was the village in the hollow on the left ; but, in
order to gain that, after pursuing the track Oliver had pointed out,
the men must have made a circuit of open ground, which it was impos-
sible they could have accomplished in so short a time. A thick
wood skirted the meadow-land in another direction ; but they could
not have gained that covert for the same reason.

" It must have been a dream, Oliver," said Harry Maylie.

** Oh no, indeed, sir," replied Oliver, shuddering at the very recol-

Another Failure. 215

lection of the old wi'etch's countenance ; " I saw liim too plainly for
that. I saw them both, as plainly as I see you now."

" Who was the other ? " inquired Harry and Mr. Losberne, together.

" The very same man I told you of, who came so suddenly upon me
at the inn," said Oliver. " We had our eyes fixed full upon each
other ; and I could swear to him."

" They took this way ? " demanded Harry : " are you sure ? "

" As I am that the men were at the window," replied Oliver, pointing
down, as he spoke, to the hedge which divided the cottage-garden
from the meadow. " The tall man leaped over, just there ; and the
Jew, running a few paces to the right, crept through that gap."

The two gentlemen watched Oliver's earnest face, as he spoke, and
looking from him to each other, seemed to feel satisfied of the accuracy
of what he said. Still, in no direction were there any appearances of
the trampling of men in hurried flight. The grass was long ; but it
was trodden down nowhere, save where their own feet had crushed it.
The sides and brinks of the ditches were of damp clay ; but in no one
place could they discern the print of men's shoes, or the slightest
mark which would indicate that any feet had pressed the ground for
hours before.

" This is strange ! " said Harry.

"Strange?" echoed the doctor. "Blathers and Dufi", themselves,
could make nothing of it."

Notwithstanding the evidently useless nature of their search, they
did not desist until the coming on of night rendered its further prose-
cution hopeless ; and even then, they gave it up with reluctance.
Giles was despatched to the different ale-houses in the village, furnished
with the best description Oliver could give of the appearance and
dress of the strangers. Of these, the Jew was, at all events, suffi-
ciently remarkable to be remembered, supposing he had been seen
drinking, or loitering about ; but Giles returned without any intel-
ligence, calculated to dispel or lessen the mystery.

On the next day, fresh search was made, and the inquiries renewed ;
but with no better success. On the day following, Oliver and Mr.
Maylie repaired to the market-town, in the hope of seeing or hearing
something of the men there ; but this effort was equally fruitless.
After a few days, the affair began to be forgotten, as most affairs are,
when wonder, having no fresh food to support it, dies away of itself.

Meanwhile, Rose was rapidly recovering. She had left her room :
was able to go out ; and mixing once more with the family, carried joy
into the hearts of all.

But, although this happy change had a. visible effect on the little
circle ; and although cheerfnl voices and merry laughter were once
more heard in the cottage ; there was at times, an unwonted restraint
upon some there : even upon Rose herself : which Oliver could not
fail to remark. Mrs. Maylie and her son were often closeted together
for a long time ; and more than once Bose appeared with traces of

214 Oliver Twist.

tears upon her face. After Mr. Losberne liad fixed a day for his
departure to Chertsey, these symptoms increased ; and it became
evident that something was in progress which affected the peace of
the young lady, and of somebody else besides.

At length, one morning, when Eose was alone in the breakfast-
l>arlour, Harry Maylie entered ; and, with some hesitation, begged
permission to speak with her for a few moments.

"A ie^ — a very few — will suffice, Eose," said the young man,
drawing his chair towards her. " What I shall have to say, has already
presented itself to your mind ; the most cherished hopes of my heart
are not unknown to you, though from my lips you have not heard them
stated."

Eose had been very pale from the moment of his entrance ; but that
might have been the effect of her recent illness. She merely bowed ;
and bending over some plants that stood near, waited in silence for
him to proceed.

" I — I — ought to have left here, before," said Harry.

" You should, indeed," replied Eose. " Forgive me for saying so,
but I wish you had."

"I was brought here, by the most dreadful and agonising of all
apprehensions," said the young man ; " the fear of losing the one dear
being on whom my every wish and hope are fixed. You had been
dying: trembling between earth and heaven. We know that when
the young, the beautiful, and good, are visited with sickness, their
pure spirits insensibly turn towards their bright home of lasting rest ;
we know, Heaven help us ! that the best and fairest of our kind, too
often fade in blooming."

There were tears in the eyes of the gentle girl, as these words were
spoken ; and when one fell upon the flower over which she bent, and
glistened brightly in its cup, making it more beautiful, it seemed as
though the outjjouring of her fresh young heart, claimed kindred
naturally, with the loveliest things in nature.

" A creature," continued the young man, passionately, " a creature
as fair and innocent of guile as one of God's own angels, fluttered
between life and death. Oh ! who could hope, when the distant world
to which she was akin, half opened to her view, that she would return
to the sorrow and calamity of this ! Eose, Eose, to know that you
were passing away like some soft shadow, which a light from above,
casts upon the earth ; to have no hope that you would be spared to
those who linger here ; hardly to know a reason why you should be ;
to feel that you belonged to that bright sphere whither so many of the
fairest and the best have winged their early flight ; and yet to pray,
amid all these consolations, that you might be restored to those who
loved you — these were distractions almost too great to bear. They
were mine, by day and night ; and with them, came such a rushing
ton-ent of fears, and apprehensions, and selfish regrets, lest you should
die, and never know how devotedly I loved you, as almost bore down

A Love Scene. 215

sense and reason in its conrse. Yon recovered. Day by day, and
almost hour by hour, some drop of health came back, and mingling
with the spent and feeble stream of life which circulated languidly
within you, swelled it again to a high and rushing tide. I have
watched you change almost from death, to life, with eyes that turned
blind with their eagerness and deep affection. Do not tell me that
you wish I had lost this ; for it has softened my heart to all mankind."

" I did not mean that," said Eose, weeping ; " I only wish you had
left here, that you might have turned to high and noble pursuits
again ; to pursuits weU worthy of you."

" There is no pursuit more worthy of me : more worthy of tho
highest nature that exists : than the struggle to win such a heart as
yours," said the young man, taking her hand. " Rose, my own dear
Rose ! For years — for years — I have loved you ; hoping to win my
way to fame, and then come proudly home and tell you it had been
pursued only for you to share ; thinking, in my day-dreams, how I
would remind you, in that happy moment, of the many silent tokens
I had given of a boy's attachment, and claim your hand, as in redemj}-
tion of some old mute contract that had been sealed between us !
That time has not arrived ; but here, with no fame won, and no young
vision realised, I offer you the heart so long your own, and stake my
all upon the words with which you greet the offer."

" Your behaviour has ever been land and noble," said Rose, master-
ing the emotions by which she was agitated. " As you believe that I
am not insensible or ungrateful, so hear my answer."

" It is, that I may endeavour to deserve you ; it is, dear Rose ? "

" It is," replied Rose, " that you must endeavour to forget me ; not
as your old and dearly-attached companion, for that would wound me
deeply ; but, as the object of your love. Look into the world ; think
how many hearts you would be proud to gain, are there. Confide some
other passion to me, if you will ; I will be the truest, warmest, and
most faithful friend you have."

There was a pause, during which, Rose, who had covered her face
with one hand, gave free vent to her tears. Harry still retained the
other.

" And your reasons, Rose," he said, at length, in a low voice ; " your
reasons for this decision ? "

" You have a right to know them," rejoined Rose. " You can say
nothing to alter my resolution. It is a duty that I must perform. I
owe it, alike to others, and to myself."

"Toyoui-self?"

" Yes, Harry. I owe it to myself, that I, a friendless, portionless,
gii'l, with a blight upon my name, should not give your friends reason
to suspect that I had sordidly yielded to your first passion, and
fastened myself, a clog, on all your hopes and projects. I owe it to
you and yours, to prevent you from opposing, in the warmth of your
generous nature, this great obstacle to your progress in the world."

2i6 Oliver Twist,

" If your inclinationB ohime with your sense of duty " Harry

began.

" They do not," replied Rose, colouring deeply.

" Then you return ray love ? " said Harry. " Say but that, dear Rose ;
Bay but that ; and soften the bitterness of this hard disappointment ! "

" If I could have done so, without doing heavy wrong to him I
loved," rejoined Rose, " I could have "

"Have received this declaration very differently?" said Harry.
" Do not conceal that from me, at least, Rose."

" I could," said Rose. " Stay ! " she added, disengaging her hand,
"why should we prolong this painful interview? Most painful to
mo, and yet productive of lasting happiness, notwithstanding ; for it
will be happiness to know that I once held the high place in your
regard which I now occupy, and every triumph you achieve in life
will animate me with new fortitude and firmness. Farewell, Harry !
As we have met to-day, we meet no more ; but in other relations than
those in which this conversation would have placed us, we may be
long and happily entwined ; and may every blessing that the prayers
of a true and earnest heart can call down from the source of all truth
and sincerity, cheer and prosper you I "

" Another word, Rose," said Harry. " Your reason in your own
words. From your own lips, let me hear it ! "

" The prospect before you," answered Rose, firmly, " is a brilliant
one. All the honours to which great talents and powerful connections
can help men in public life, are in store for you. But those connec-
tions are proud ; and I will neither mingle with such as may hold in
Bcorn the mother who gave me life ; nor bring disgrace or failure on
the son of her who has so well supplied that mother's place. In a
word," said the young lady, turning away, as her temporary firmness
forsook her, " there is a stain upon my name, which the world visits
on innocent heads. I will carry it into no blood but my own ; and
the reproach shall rest alone on me."

" One word more. Rose. Dearest Rose ! one more ! " cried Harry,
throwing himself before her. " If I had been less — less fortunate, the
world would call it — if some obscure and peaceful life had been my
destiny — if I had been poor, sick, helpless — would you have turned
from me then ? Or has my probable advancement to riches and
honour, given this scruple birth ? "

" Do not press me to reply," answered Rose. " The question does
not arise, and never will. It is unfair, almost unkind, to urge it."

" If your answer be what I almost dare to hope it is," retorted
Harry, " it will shed a gleam of happiness upon my lonely way, and
light the path before me. It is not an idle thing to do so much, by
the utterance of a few brief words, for one who loves you beyond all
else. Oh, Rose . in the name of my ardent and enduring attachment ;
in the name of all I have suffered for you, and all you doom me to
undergo ; answer me this one question ! "

A Parting. 217

"Then, if your lot had been differently cast," rejoined Rose ; "if
you had been even a little, bat not so far, above me ; if I could have
been a help and comfort to you in any humble scene of peace and
retirement, and not a blot and drawback in ambitious and distinguished
crowds ; I should have been spared this trial. I have every reason
to be happy, very happy, now ; but then, Harry, I own I should have
been happier."

Busy recollections of old hopes, cherished as a girl, long ago,
crowded into the mind of Rose, while making this avowal ; but they
brought tears with them, as old hopes will when they come back
withered ; and they relieved her.

" I cannot help this weakness, and it makes my purpose stronger,"
said Rose, extending her hand. " I must leave you now, indeed."

" I ask one promise," said Harry. " Once, and only once more, —
say within a year, but it may be much sooner, — I may speak to you
again on this subject, for the last time."

" Not to press me to alter my right determination," replied Rose,
with a melancholy smile ; " it will be useless."

" No," said Harry ; " to hear you repeat it, if you will — finally
repeat it ! I will lay at your feet, whatever of station or fortune I
may possess ; and if you still adhere to your present resolution, will
not seek, by word or act, to change it."

" Then let it be so," rejoined Rose ; " it is but one pang the more,
and by that time I may bo enabled to bear it better."

She extended her hand again. But the young man caught her to
his bosom ; and imprinting one kiss on her beautiful forehead, hurried
from the room.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

IS A VERY SHORT ONE, AND MAY APPEAR OP NO GREAT IMPORTANCE IN
ITS PLACE, BUT IT SHOULD BE READ NOTWITHSTANDING, AS A SEQUEL
TO THE LAST, AND A KEY TO ONE THAT WILL FOLLOW WHEN ITS
TIME ARRIVES.

*' And so you are resolved to be my travelling companion this morning ;
e\i ? " said the doctor, as Harry Maylie joined him and Oliver at the
breakfast-table. " Why, you are not in the same mind or intention
two half-hours together ! "

" You will tell me a different tale one of these days," said Harry,
colouring without any perceptible reason.

" I hope I may have good cause to do so," replied Mr, Losbeme ;
*' though I confess I don't think I shall. But yesterday morning you
had made up your mind, in a great hurry, to stay here, and to

21 8 Oliver Twist.

accompany youv mother, like a dutiful son, to the sea-side. Before
noon, you announce that you are going to do me the honour of
accompanying me as far as I go, on your road to London. And at
night, you urge me, with great mystery, to start before the ladies are
stirring ; the consequence of which is, that young Oliver here is
pinned down to his breakfast when he ought to be ranging the
meadows after botanical phenomena of all kinds. Too bad, isn't it,
Oliver?"

" I should have been very sorry not to have been at home when you
and Mr. Maylie went away, sir," rejoined Oliver.

" That's a fine fellow," said the doctor ; " you shall come and see
me when you return. But, to speak seriously, Harry ; has any com-
munication from the great nobs produced this sudden anxiety on your
part to be gone ? "

"The great nobs," replied Harry, "under which designation, I
presume, you include my most stately uncle, have not communicated
with me at all, since I have been here ; nor, at this time of the year,
is it likely that anything would occur to render necessary my imme-
diate attendance among them."

" Well," said the doctor, " you are a queer fellow. But of course
they will get you into parliament at the election before Christmas,
and these sudden shiftings and changes are no bad preparation for
political life. There's something in that. Good training is always
desirable, whether the race be for place, cup, or sweepstakes."

Harry Maylie looked as if he could have followed up this short
dialogue by one or two remarks that would have staggered the doctor
not a little ; but he contented himseK with saying, " We shall see,"
and pursued the subject no farther. The post-chaise drove up to the
door shortly afterwards; and Giles coming in for the luggage, the
good doctor bustled out, to see it packed.

" Oliver," said Harry Maylie, in a low voice, " let me speak a word
with you."

Oliver walked into the window-recess to which Mr. Maylie beckoned
him ; much surprised at the mixture of sadness and boisterous spirits,
which his whole behaviour displayed.

" You can write well now ? " said Harry, laying his hand upon
his arm.

" I hope so, sir," replied Oliver.

" I shall not be at home again, perhaps for some time ; I wish you
would write to me — say once a fortnight : every alternate Monday : to
the General Post Office in London. Will you ? "

" Oh ! certainly, sir ; I shall be proud to do it," exclaimed Oliver,
greatly delighted with the commission.

"I should like to know how — how my mother and Miss Maylie
are," said the young man ; " and you can fill up a sheet by telling me
what walks you take, and what you talk about, and whether she —
they, I mean — seem happy and quite well. You understand me ? "

" Mr. Harry departs. 219

" Oh ! quite, sir, qnite," replied Oliver.

" I would rather you did not mention it to them," said Harry, huny-

ing over his words ; " because it might make my mother anxious to

. write to me oftener, and it is a trouble and worry to her. Let it be a

secret between you and me ; and mind you tell me everything ! I

depend upon you."

Oliver, quite elated and honoured by a sense of his importance,
faithfully promised to be secret and explicit in his communications.
Mr. Maylie took leave of him, with many assurances of his regard
and protection.

The doctor was in the chaise ; Giles (who, it had been arranged,
should be left behind) held the door open in his hand ; and the women-
servants were in the garden, looking on. Harry cast one slight glance
at the latticed window, and jumped into the carriage.

" Drive on ! " he cried, " hard, fast, full gallop I Nothing short of
flying will keep pace with me, to-day."

" Halloa 1 " cried the doctor, lotting down the front glass in a great
hurry, and shouting to the postillion ; " something very short of flying
will keep pace with me. Do you hear ? "

Jingling and clattering, till distance rendered its noise inaudible,
and its rapid progress only perceptible to the eye, the vehicle wound
its way along the road, almost hidden in a cloud of dust : now wholly
disappearing, and now becoming visible again, as intervening objects,
or the intricacies- of the way, permitted. It was not until even the
dusty cloud was no longer to be seen, that the gazers dispersed.

And there was one looker-on, who remained with eyes fixed upon
the spot where the carriage had disappeared, long after it was many
miles away ; for, behind the white curtain which had shrouded her
from view when Harry raised his eyes towards the window, sat Rose
herself.

" He seems in high spirits and happy," she said, at length. " I
feared for a time he might be otherwise. I was mistaken. I am
very, very glad."

Tears are signs of gladness as well as grief; but those which coursed
down Rose's face, as she sat pensively at the window, still gazing in
the same direction, seemed to tell more of sorrow than of joy.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

IN WHICH THE READER MAY PERCEIVE A CONTRAST, NOT UNCOMMON IN
MATRIMONIAL CASES.

Mr. Bumble sat in the workhouse parlour, with his eyes moodily fixed
on the cheerless grate, whence, as it was summer time, no brighter
gleam proceeded, than the reflection of certain sickly rays of the sun,
which were sent back from its cold and shining surface. A paper
fly-cage dangled from the ceiKng, to which he occasionally raised his
eyes in gloomy thought ; and, as the heedless insects hovered round
the gaudy net-work, Mr. Bumble would heave a deep sigh, while a
more gloomy shadow overspread his countenance. Mr. Bumble was
meditating ; it might be that the insects brought to mind, some
painful passage in his own past life.

Nor was Mr. Bumble's gloom the only thing calculated to awaken
a pleasing melancholy in the bosom of a spectator. There were not
wanting other appearances, and those closely connected with &is own
person, which announced that a great change had taken place in the
position of his affairs. The laced coat, and the cocked hat; where
were they ? He still wore knee-breeches, and dark cotton stockings
on his nether limbs ; but they were not the breeches. The coat was
wide-skirted ; and in that respect like the coat, but, oh, how different !
The mighty cocked hat was replaced by a modest round one. Mr.
Bumble was no longer a beadle.

There are some promotions in life, which, independent of the more
substantial rewards they offer, acquire peculiar value and dignity from
the coats and waistcoats connected with them. A field-marshal has
his uniform ; a bishop his silk apron ; a counsellor his silk gown ; a
beadle his cocked hat. Strip the bishop of his apron, or the beadle of
his hat and lace ; what are they ? Men. Mere men. Dignity, and
even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat
than some people imagine.

Mr. Bumble had married Mrs. Corney, and was master of the work-
house. Another beadle had come into power. On him the cocked hat,
gold-laced coat, and staff, had all three descended.

" And to-morrow two months it was done ! " said Mr. Bumble, with
a sigh. " It seems a age."

Mr. Bumble might have meant that he had concentrated a whole
existence of happiness into the short space of eight weeks ; but the
sigh — there was a vast deal of meaning in the sigh.

"I sold myself," said Mr. Bumble, pursuing the same train of
reflection, " for six teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a milk-pot ;
with a small quantity of second-hand furniture, and twenty pound in
money. 1 went very reasonable. Cheap, dirt cheap ! '

Failure of Mr, Bumble's Eye. 221

♦' Cheap ! " cried a shrill voice in Mr. Bumble's ear : " yon wonld
have been dear at any price ; and dear enough I paid for you, Lord
above knows that ! "

Mr. Bumble turned, and encountered the face of his interesting
consort, who, imperfectly comprehending the few words she had
overheard of his complaint, had hazarded the foregoing remark at a
venture.

" Mrs. Bumble, ma'am ! " said Mr. Bumble, with a sentimental
sternness.

" Well ! " cried the lady.

" Have the goodness to look at me," said Mr. Bumble, fixing his eyes
upon her. (" If she stands such a eye as that," said Mr. Bumble to
himself, " she can stand anything. It is a eye I never knew to fail
with paupers. If it fails with her, my power is gone.")

Whether an exceedingly small expansion of eye be sufficient to
quell paupers, who, being lightly fed, are in no very high condition ;
or whether the late Mrs. Corney was particularly proof against eagle
glances; are matters of opinion. The matter of fact, is, that the
matron was in no way overpowered by Mr. Bumble's scowl, but, on
the conti'ary, treated it with great disdain, and even raised a laugh
thereat, which sounded as though it were genuine.

On hearing this most unexpected sound, Mr. Bumble looked, first
incredulous, and afterwards amazed. He then relapsed into his
former state ; nor did he rouse himself imtil his attention was again
awakened by the voice of his partner.

"Are yon going to sit snoring there, all day?" inquired Mrs.
Bumble.

" I am going to sit here, as long as I think proper, ma'am," rejoined
Mr. Bumble ; " and although I was not snoring, I shall snore, gape,
sneeze, laugh, or cry, as the humour strikes me ; such being my
prerogative."

" Your prerogative ! " sneered Mrs. Bumble, with inefiable con-
tempt.

" I said the word, ma'am," said Mr. Bumble. " The prerogative of
a man is to command."

" And what's the prerogative of a woman, in the name of Good-
ness ? " cried the relict of Mr. Corney deceased.

" To obey, ma'am," thundered Mr. Bumble. " Your late unfortunate
husband should have taught it you ; and then, perhaps, he might have
been alive now. I wish ho was, poor man ! "

Mrs. Bumble, seeing at a glance, that the decisive moment had now
arrived, and that a blow struck for the mastership on one side or other,
must necessarily be final and conclusive, no sooner hoard this allusion
to the dead and gone, than she dropped into a chair, and with a loud
scream that Mr. Bumble was a hard-hearted brute, fell into a paroxysm
of tears.

But, tears were not the things to find their way to Mr. Bumble's

222 Oliver Twist.

soul; his heart was waterproof. Like washable beaver hats that
improve with raiu, his nerves were rendered stouter and more
vigorous, by showers of tears, which, being tokens of weakness, and so
far tacit admissions of his own power, pleased and exalted him. He
eyed his good lady with looks of great satisfaction, and begged, in an
encouraging manner, that she should cry her hardest : the exercise
being looked upon, by the faculty, as strongly conducive to health.

"It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes,
and softens down the temper," said Mr. Bumble. " So cry away."

As he discharged himself of this pleasantry, Mr. Bumble took his
hat from a peg, and putting it on, rather rakishly, on one side, as a
man might, who felt he had asserted his superiority in a becoming
manner, thrust his hands into his pockets, and sauntered towards the
door, with much ease and waggishness depicted in his whole appear-
ance.

Now, Mrs. Oorney that was, had tried the tears, because they were
less troublesome than a manual assault ; but, she was quite prepared
to make trial of the latter mode of proceeding, as Mr. Bumble was not
long in discovering.

The first proof he experienced of the fact, was conveyed in a hollow
sound, immediately succeeded by the sudden flying off of his hat to
the opposite end of the room. This preliminary proceeding laying
bare his head, the expert lady, clasping him tightly round the throat
with one hand, inflicted a sliower of blows (dealt with singular vigour
and dexterity) upon it with the other. This done, she created a little
variety by scratching his face, and tearing his hair ; and, having, by
this time, inflicted as much punishment as she deemed necessary for
the offence, she pushed him over a chair, which was luckily well
situated for the purpose : and defied him to talk about his prerogative
again, if he dared.

" Get up ! " said Mrs. Bumble, in a voice of command. " And take
yourself away from here, unless you want me to do something
desperate."

Mr. Bumble rose with a very rueful countenance : wondering much
what something desperate might be. Picking up his hat, he looked
towards the door.

" Are you going ? " demanded Mrs. Bumble.

" Certainly, my dear, certainly," rejoined Mr. Bumble, making a
quicker motion towards the door. " I didn't intend to — I'm going, my
dear ! You are so very violent, that really I "

At this instant, Mrs. Bumble stepped hastily forward to replace the
carpet, which had been kicked up in the scuflle. Mr. Bumble imme-
diately darted out of the room, without bestowing another thought on
his unfinished sentence : leaving the late Mrs. Corney in full possession
of the field.

Mr. Bumble was fairly taken by surprise, and faiily beaten. He
had a decided propensity for bullying : derived no inconsiderable

J^-i^

■'y&piy,

The Mighty fallen. 223

pleasnro from the exercise of petty cruelty ; and, consequently, was
(it is needless to say) a coward. This is by no means a disparagement
to his character ; for many official personages, who are held in high
respect and admii-ation, are the victims of similar infirmities. The
remark is made, indeed, rather in his favour than otherwise, and with
a view of impressing the reader with a just sense of his qualifications
for office.

But, the measure of his degradation was not yet full. After making
a tour of the house, and thinking, for the first time, that the poor-laws
really were too hard on people ; and that men who ran away from
their wives, leaving them chargeable to the parish, ought, in justice,
to be visited with no punishment at all, but rather rewarded as
meritorious individuals who had sufiered much ; Mr. Bumble came to
a room where some of the female paupers were usually employed in
washing the parish linen : whence the sound of voices in conversation,
now proceeded.

" Hem ! " said Mr. Bumble, summoning up all his native dignity.
" These women at least shall continue to respect the prerogative.
Hallo ! hallo there ! What do you mean by this noise, you hussies ? "

With these words, Mr. Bumble opened the door, and walked in
with a very fierce and angry manner : which was at once exchanged
for a most humiliated and cowering air, as his eyes unexpectedly
rested on the form of his lady wife.

" My dear," said Mr. Bumble, " I didn't know you were here."

" Didn't know I was here 1 " repeated Mrs. Bumble. " What do
]}ou do here ? "

" I thought they were talking rather too much to be doing their
work properly, my dear," replied Mr. Bumble : glancing distractedly
at a couple of old women at the wash-tub, who were comparing notes
of admii-ation at the workhouse-master's humility.

" You thought they were talking too much ? " said Mrs. Bumble.
" Wliat business is it of yours ? "

" Why, my dear " urged Mr. Bumble submissively.

" What business is it of yours ? " demanded Mrs. Bumble, again.

"It's very true, you're matron here, my dear," submitted Mi*.
Bumble ; " but I thought you mightn't be in the way just then."

" I'll tell you what, Mr. Bumble," returned his lady. " We don't
want any of your interference. You're a great deal too fond of poking
your nose into things that don't concern you, making everybody in
the house laugh, the moment your back is turned, and making your-
self look like a fool every hour in the day. Be off"; come ! "

Mr. Bumble, seeing with excruciating feelings, the delight of the
two old paupers, who were tittering together most rapturously, hesi-
tated for an instant. Mrs. Bumble, whose patience brooked no delay,
caught up a bowl of soap-suds, and motioning him towai-ds the door,
ordered him instantly to depart, on pain of receiving the contents
upon his portly person.

224 Oliver Twist.

What could Mr. Bumble do? He looked dejectedly round, and
slunk away ; and, as he reached the door, the titterings of the paupers
broke into a shrill chuckle of irrepressible delight. It wanted but
this. He was degraded in their eyes ; he had lost caste and station
before the very paupers ; he had fallen from all the height and pomp
of beadleship, to the lowest depth of the most snubbed hen-peckery.

" All in two months ! " said Mr. Bumble, filled with dismal thoughts.
" Two months ! No more than two months ago, I was not only my
own master, but everybody else's, so far as the porochial workhouse
was concerned, and now ! — "

It was too much. Mr. Bumble boxed the ears of the boy who
opened the gate for him (for he had reached the portal in his reverie) ;
and walked, distractedly, into the street.

Ho walked up one street, and down another, until exercise had
abated the first passion of his grief ; and then the revulsion of feeling
made him thirsty. He passed a great many public-houses ; but, at
length paused before one in a by-way, whose parlour, as he gathered
from a hasty peep over the blinds, was deserted, save by one solitary
customer. It began to rain, heavily, at the moment. This determined
him. Mr. Bumble stepped in ; and ordering something to diink, as
he passed the bar, entered the apartment into which he had looked
from the street.

The man who was seated there, was tall and dark, and wore a large
cloak. He had the air of a stranger ; and seemed, by a certain
haggardness in his look, as well as by the dusty soils on his dress,
to have travelled some distance. He eyed Bumble askance, as he
entered, but scarcely deigned to nod his head in acknowledgment of
his 'salutation.

Mr. Bumble had quite dignity enough for two : supposing even that
the stranger had been more familiar : so he drank his gin-and-water
in silence, and read the paper with great show of pomp and circum-
stance.

It so happened, however : as it will happen very often, when men
fall into company under such circumstances : that Mr. Bumble felt,
every now and then, a powerful inducement, which he could not
resist, to steal a look at the stranger : and that whenever he did so,
he withdrew his eyes, in some confusion, to find that the stranger was
at that moment stealing a look at him. Mr. Bumble's awkwardness
was enhanced by the very remarkable expression of the stranger's eye,
which was keen and bright, but shadowed by a scowl of distrust and
suspicion, unlike anything he had ever observed before, and repulsive
to behold.

"When they had encountered each other's glance several times in
this way, the stranger, in a harsh, deep voice, broke silence.

" Were you looking for me," he said, " when you peered in at the
window ? "

*' Not that 1 am aware of, unless you're Mr. " Here Mr.

Mr. Bumble and the Stranger. 225

Bumble stopped short ; for he was cnrions to know the stranger's
name, and thought in his impatience, he might supply the blank.

" I see you were not," said the stitinger ; an expression of quiet
sarcasm playing about his mouth ; " or you would have known my
name. You don't know it. I would recommend you not to ask
for it."

" I meant no harm, young man," observed Mr. Bumble, majestically.

" And have done none," said the stranger.

Another silence succeeded this short dialogiio: which was again
broken by the stranger.

" I have seen you before, I think ? " said he. " You were differently
dressed at that time, and I only passed you in the street, but I should
know you again. You were beadle here, once ; were you not ? "

" I was," said Mr. Bumble, in some surprise ; " porochial beadle."

" Just so," rejoined the other, nodding his head. " It was in that
character I saw you. What are you now ? "

" Master of the workhouse," rejoined Mr. Bumble, slowly and .
impressively, to check any undue familiarity the stranger might
otherwise assume. " Master of the workhouse, young man ! "

" You have the same eye to your own interest, that you always had,
I doubt not ? " resumed the stranger, looking keenly into Mr. Bumble's
eyes, as he raised them in astonishment at the question. " Don't
scruple to answer freely, man. I know you pretty well, you see."

" I suppose, a married man," replied Mr. Bumble, shading his eyes
with his hand, and surveying the stranger, from head to foot, in
evident perplexity, " is not more averse to turning an honest penny
when he can, than a single one. Porochial officers are not so weU
paid that they can afford to refuse any little extra fee, when it comes
to them in a civil and proper manner."

The stranger smiled, and nodded his head again : as much as to
say, he had not mistaken his man ; then rang the bell.

"Fill this glass again," he said, handing Mr. Bumble's empty
tumbler to the landlord. " Let it be strong and hot. You like it so,
I suppose ? "

" Not too strong," replied Mr. Bumble, with a delicate cough.

" You understand what that means, landlord I " said the stranger,
diily.

The host smiled, disappeared, and shortly afterwards returned with
a steaming jorum : of which, the first gulp brought the water into Mr.
Bumble's eyes.

" Now listen to me," said the stranger, after closing the door and
window. " I came down to this place, to-day, to find you out ; and,
by one of those chances which the devil throws in the way of his
friends sometimes, you walked into the very room I was sitting in,
while you were uppermost in my mind. I want some information
from you. I don't ask you to give it for nothing, slight as it is. Put
up that, to begin with."

a

226 Oliver Twist.

As he spoke, he pushed a couple of sovereigns across the table to
his companion, carefully, as though unwilling that the chinking of
money should be heard without. When Mr. Bumble had scrupulously
examined the coins, to see that they were genuine, and had put them
up, with much satisfaction, in his waistcoat-pocket, he went on :

" Carry your memory back — let me see — twelve years, last winter,"

" It's a long time," said Mr. Bumble. " Very good. I've done it."

" The scone, the workhouse."

« Good ! "

" And the time, night."

"Yes."

" And the place, the crazy hole, wherever it was, in which miserable
drabs brought forth the life and health so often denied to themselves
— gave birth to puling children for the parish to rear ; and hid their
shame, rot 'em, in the grave ! "

"The lying-in room, I suppose?" said Mr. Bumble, not c^\\X)
following the stranger's excited description.

" Yes," said the stranger. " A boy was born there."

" A many boys," observed Mr. Bumble, shaking his head, despond-
ingly.

" A murrain on the young devils ! " cried the stranger ; " I speak of
one ; a meek-looking, pale-faced boy, who was apprenticed down here,
to a coffin-maker — I wish he had made his coffin, and screwed his
body in it — and who afterwards ran away to London, as it was
supposed."

" Why, you mean Oliver ! Young Twist ! " said Mr. Bumble ; " I
remember him, of course. There wasn't a obstinater young rascal "

" It's not of him I want to hear ; I've heard enough of him," said
the stranger, stopping Mr. Bumble in the outset of a tirade on tlie
subject of poor Oliver's vices. " It's of a woman ; the hag that nursed
liis mother. Where is she ? '^

" Where is she ? " said Mr. Bumble, whom the gin-and-water had
rendered facetious. " It would be hard to tell. There's no midwifery
there, whichever place she's gone to ; so I suppose she's out of employ-
ment, anyway."

" What do you mean ? " demanded the stranger, sternly.

" That she died last winter," rejoined Mr. Bumble.

The man looked fixedly at him when he had given this information,
and although he did not withdraw his eyes for some time afterwards,
his gaze gradually became vacant and abstracted, and he seemed lost
in thought. For some time, he appeared doubtful whether he ought
to be relieved or disappointed by the intelligence ; but at length he
breathed more freely ; and withdrawing his eyes, observed that it was
no great matter. With that he rose, as if to depart.

But Ml*. Bumble was cunning enough ; and he at once saw that an
opportunity was opened, for the lucrative disposal of some secret in
the possession of his better half. He well remembered the night of

Another Intennexv arranged for. 227

old Sally's death, which the occurrences of that day had given him
good reason to recollect, as the occasion on which he had proposed to
Mrs. Corney ; and although that lady had never confided to him the
disclosure of which she had been the solitary witness, he had heard
enough to know that it related to something that had occurred in the
old woman's attendance, as workhouse nurse, upon the young mother
of Oliver Twist. Hastily calling this cii-cumstance to mind, he in-
formed the stranger, with an air of mystery, that ono woman had
been closeted with the old harridan shortly before she died ; and that
she could, as he had reason to believe, throw some light on the subject
of his inquiry.

" How can I find her ? " said the stranger, thrown off his guard ;
and plainly showing that all his fears (whatever they were) were
aroused afresh by the intelligence.

" Only through me," rejoined Mr. Bumble.

" When ? " cried the stranger, hastily.

" To-morrow," rejoined Bumble.

" At nine in the evening," said the stranger, producing a scrap of
paper, and writing down upon it, an obscure address by the water-side,
in characters that betrayed his agitation ; " at nine in the evening, bring
her to me there. I needn't tell you to be secret. It's your interest."

With these words, he led the way to the door, after stopping to pay
for the liquor that had been drunk. Shortly remarking that their
roads were different, he departed, without more ceremony than an
emphatic repetition of the hour of appointment for the following night.

On glancing at the address, the parochial functionary observed Qiat
it contained no name. The stranger had not gone far, so he made
after him to ask it.

"W^hat do you want?" cried the man, turning quickly round, as
Bumble touched him on the arm. " Following me ? "

'• Only to ask a question," said the other, pointing to the scrap of
paper. '• What name am I to ask for ? "

" Monks ! " rejoined the man ; and strode, hastily, away.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF WHAT PASSED BETWEEN MB. AND MBS.
BUMBLE, AND MB. MONKS, AT THEIB NOCTUBNAL INTEBVIEWc

It was a dull, close, overcast summer evening. The clouds, which
had been threatening all day, spread out in a dense and sluggish mass
of vapour, already yielded large drops of rain, and seemed to presage
a violent thunder-storm, when Mr. and Mrs. Bumble, turning out of
the main street of the town, dii'ected their course towards a scattered

228 Oliver Twist.

little colony of ruinous houses, distant from it some mile and a-half,
or thereabouts, and erected on a low unwholesome swamp, bordering
upon the river.

They wore both wrapped in old and shabby outer garments, which
might, perhaps, serve the double purpcjo of protecting their persons
from the rain, and sheltering them from observation. The husband
carried a lantern, from which, however, no light yet shone ; and
trudged on, a few paces in front, as though — the way being dirty — to
give his wife the benefit of treading in his heavy foot-prints. They
went on, in profound silence ; every now and then, Mr. Bumble
relaxed his pace, and turned his head as if to make sure that his help-
mate was following ; then, discovering that she was close at his heels,
he mended his rate of walking, and proceeded, at a considerable
increase of speed, towards their place of destination.

This was far from being a place of doubtful character ; for it had
long been known as the residence of none but low ruffians, who, under
various pretences of living by their labour, subsisted chiefly on plunder
and crime. It was a collection of mere hovels : some, hastily built
with loose bricks : others, of old worm-eaten ship- timber : jumbled
together without any attempt at order or arrangement, and planted,
for the most part, within a few feet of the river's bank. A few leaky
boats drawn up on the mud, and made fast to the dwarf wall which
skirted it : and here and there an oar or coil of rope : appeared, at
first, to indicate that the inhabitants of these miserable cottages pursued
some avocation on the river ; but a glance at the shattered and useless
condition of the articles thus displayed, would have led a passer-by,
without much difficulty, to the conjecture that they were disposed
there, rather for the preservation of appearances, than with any view to
their being actually employed.

In the heart of this cluster of huts ; and skirting the river, which its
upper stories overhung ; stood a large building, formerly used as a
manufactory of some kind. It had, in its day, probably furnished
employment to the inhabitants of the surrounding tenements. But it
had long since gone to ruin. The rat, the worm, and the action of
the damp, had weakened and rotted the piles on which it stood ; and
a considerable portion of the building had already sunk down into the
water ; while the remainder, tottering and bending over the dark
stream, seemed to wait a favourable opportunity of following its old
companion, and involving itself in the same fate.

It was before this ruinous building that the worthy couple paused,
as the first peal of distant thunder reverberated in the air, and the
rain commenced pouring violently down.

" The place should be somewhere here," said Bumble, consulting a
scrap of paper he held in his hand.

" Halloa there ! " cried a voice from above.

Following the sound, Mr. Bumble raised his head, and descried a
man looMug out of a door, breast-high, on the second story.

Mr. and Mrs. Bumble wait on Mr. Monks. 229

" Stand still, a rainnte," cried the voice ; " I'll be with you directly."
With which the head disappeared, and the door closed.

" Is that the man ? " asked Mr. Bumble's good lady.

Mr. Bumble nodded in the afiSrmative.

" Then, mind what I told you," said the matron : " and be careful
to say as little as you can, or you'll betray us at once."

Mr. Bumble, who had eyed the building with very rueful looks,
was apparently about to express some doubts relative to the advisability
of proceeding any further with the enterprise just then, when he was
prevented by the appearance of Monks: who opened a small door,
near which they stood, and beckoned them inwards.

" Come in 1 " he cried impatiently, stamping his foot upon the
ground. " Don't keep me here ! "

The woman, who had hesitated at first, walked boldly in, without
any other invitation. Mr. Bumble, who was ashamed or afraid to lag
behind, followed : obviously very ill at ease and with scarcely any of
that remarkable dignity which was usually his chief characteristic.

"What the devil made you stand lingering there, in the wet?"
said Monks, turning round, and addressing Bumble, after he had
bolted the door behind them.

" We — we were only cooling ourselves," stammered Bumble, looking
apprehensively about him.

" Cooling yourselves ! " retorted Monks. " Not all the rain that
ever fell, or ever will fall, will put as much of hell's fire out, as a man
can carry about with him. You won't cool yourself so easily ; don't
think it ! "

"With this agreeable speech. Monks turned short upon the matron,
and bent his gaze upon her, till even she, who was not easily cowed,
was fain to withdraw her eyes, and turn them towards the ground.

" This is the woman, is it ? " demanded Monks.

" Hem ! That is the woman," replied Mr. Bumble, mindful of his
wife's caution.

" You think women never can keep secrets, I suppose ? " said the
matron, interposing, and returning, as she spoke, the searching look
of Monks.

" I know they will always keep one till it's found out," said Monks.

" And what may that be ? " asked the matron.

" The loss of their own good name," replied Monks. " So, by the
same rule, if a woman's a party to a secret that might hang or trans-
port her, I'm not afraid of her telling it to anybody ; not I ! Do you
understand, mistress ? "

" No," rejoined the matron, slightly colouring as she spoke.

" Of course you don't ! " said Monks. " How should you ? "

Bestowing something half-way between a smile and a frown upon
his two companions, and again beckoning them to follow him, the
man hastened across the apartment, which was of considerable extent,
but low w the roof. He was preparing to ascend a steep staircase, or

230 Oliver Twist.

rather ladder, leading to another floor of warehouses above : when a
bright flash of lightning streamed down the aperture, and a peal of
thunder followed, which shook the crazy building to its centre.

" Hear it ! " he cried, shrinking back. " Hear it ! Rolling and
crashing on as if it echoed through a thousand caverns where the
devils were hiding from it. I hate the sound ! "

He remained silent for a few moments ; and then, removing his
liands suddenly from his face, showed, to the unspeakable discom-
jjosure of Mr. Bumble, that it was much distorted, and discoloured.

" These fits come over me, now and then," said Monks, observing
his alarm ; " and thunder sometimes brings them on. Don't mind me
DOW ; it's all over for this once."

Thus speaking, he led the way up the ladder; and hastily closing
the window-shutter of the room into which it led, lowered a lantern
which hung at the end of a rope and pulley passed through one of the
heavy beams in the ceiling : and which cast a dim light upon an old
table and three chairs that were placed beneath it.

"Now," said Monks, when they had all three seated themselves,
" the sooner we come to our business, the better for all. The woman
knows what it is, does she ? "

The question was addressed to Bumble ;" but his wife anticipated the
reply, by intimating that she was perfectly acquainted with it.

" He is right in saying that you were with this hag the night she
died ; and that she told you something "

" About the mother of the boy you named," replied the matron
interrupting him. " Yes."

" The first question is, of what nature was her communication ? "
said Monks.

" That's the second," observed the woman with much deliberation.
" The first is, what may the communication be worth ? "

" Who the devil can tell that, without knowing of what kind it is ? "
asked Monks.

"Nobody better than you, I am persuaded," answered Mrs.
Bumble: who did not want for spirit, as her yokefellow could
abundantly testify.

" Humph ! " said Monks significantly, and with a look of eager
inquiry ; " there may be money's worth to get, eh ? "

" Perhaps there may," was the composed reply.

*' Something that was taken from her," said Monks. " Something
that she wore. Something that "

" You had better bid," interrupted Mrs. Bumble. " I have heard
enough, already, to assure me that you are the man I ought to
talk to "

Mr. Bumble, who had not yet been admittted by his better half into
any greater share of the secret than he had originally possessed,
listened to this dialogue with outstretched neck and distended eyes :
which he directed towards his wife and Monks, by turns, in undis-

. Mrs. Buinhle manages the Conference — 231

gnised astonishment ; increased, if possible, when the latter sternly
demanded what sum was reqniied for the disclosure.

" What's it worth to you ? " asked the woman, as collectedly as
before.

" It may be nothing ; it may be twenty pounds," replied Monks.
" Speak out, and let me know which."

" Add five pounds to the sum you have named ; give me five-and-
twenty pounds in gold," said the woman ; " and I'll tell you all I
know. Not before."

" Five-and-twenty pounds I " exclaimed Monks, drawing back

" I spoke as plainly as I could," replied Mrs, Bumble. " It's not
a large sum, either."

" Not a large sum for a paltry secret, that may be nothing when
it's told ! " cried Monks impatiently ; " and which has been lying dead
for twelve years past or more 1 "

; " Such matters keep well, and, like good wine, often double their
value in course of time," answered the matron, still preserving the
resolute indifference she had assumed. " As to lying dead, there are
those who will lie dead for twelve thousand years to come, or twelve
million, for anything you or I know, who will tell strange tales at
last!"

" What if I pay it for nothing ? " asked Monks, hesitating.

" You can easily take it away again," replied the matron. " I am
but a woman ; alone here ; and unprotected."

"Not alone, my dear, nor unprotected neither," submitted Mr.
Bumble, in a voice tremulous with fear : "J am here, my dear, And
besides," said Mr. Bumble, his teeth chattering as he spoke, ''Mr.
Monks is too much of a gentleman to attempt any violence on porochial
persons. Mr. Monks is aware that I am not a young man, my dear,
and also that I am a little run to seed, as I may say \ but he has
heerd : I say I have no doubt Mr. Monks has heerd, my dear : that I
am a very determined officer, with very uncommon strength, if I'm
once roused. I only want a little rousing ; that's all."

As Mr. Bumble spoke, he made a melancholy feint of grasping his
lantern with fierce determination ; and plainly showed, by the alarmed
expression of every feature, that he did want a little rousing, and not
a little, prior to making any very warlike demonstration : unless,
indeed, against paupers, or other person or persons trained down for
the purpose.

" You are a fool," said Mrs. Bumble, in reply ; " and had better
hold your tongue."

" He had better have cut it out, before he came, if he can't speak in
a lower tone," said Monks, grimly. " So ! He's your husband, eh ? "

" He my husband ! " tittered the matron, parrying the question.

" I thought as much, when you came in," rejoined Monks, marking
the angry glance which the lady darted at her spouse as she spoke.
"So much the better; I have less hesitation in dealing with two

232 Oliver Twist.

people, when I find that there's only one will between them. I'm in
earnest. See here ! "

He thrust his hand into a side-pocket ; and producing a canvas bag,
told out twenty-five sovereigns on the table, and pushed them over to
the woman.

" Now," he said, " gather them up ; and when this cursed peal of
thunder, which I feel is coming up to break over the house-top, is
gone, let's hear your story."

The thunder, which seemed in fact much nearer, and to shiver and
break almost over their heads, having subsided. Monks, raising his
face from the table, bent forward to listen to what the woman should
say. The faces of the three nearly touched, as the two men leant
over the small table in their eagerness to hear, and the woman also
leant forward to render her whisper audible. The sickly rays of the
suspended lantern falling directly upon them, aggravated the paleness
and anxiety of their countenances : which, encircled by the deepest
gloom and darkness, looked ghastly in the extreme.

"When this woman, that we called old Sally, died," the matron
began, " she and I were alone."

" Was there no one by ? " asked Monks, in the same hollow whisper ;
" no sick wretch or idiot in some other bed ? No one who could
hear, and might, by possibility, understand ? "

" Not a soul," replied the woman ; " we were alone. I stood alone
beside the body when death came over it."

" Good," said Monks, regarding her attentively. " Go on."

" She spoke of a young creature," resumed the matron, " who had
brought a child into the world some years before ; not merely in the
same room, but in the same bed, in which she then lay dying."

"Ay ? " said Monks, with quivering lip, and glancing over his
shoulder, " Blood ! How things come about ! "

" The child was the one you named to him last night," said the
matron, nodding carelessly towards her husband ; " the mother this
nurse had robbed."

" In life ? " asked Monks.

" In death," replied the woman, with something like a shudder.
" She stole from the corpse, when it had hardly turned to one, that
which the dead mother had prayed her, with her last breath, to keep
for the infant's sake."

" She sold it ? " cried Monks, with desperate eagerness ; " did she
sell it ? Where ? When ? To whom ? How long before ? "

" As she told me, with great difficulty, that she had done this," said
the matron, " she fell back and died."

" Without saying more ? " cried Monks, in a voice which, from its
very suppression, seemed only the more furious. " It's a lie ! I'll
not be played with. She said more. I'll tear the life out of you
both, but I'll know what it was."

*' She didn't utter another word," said the woman, to all appearance

— And concludes it. 233

unmoved (as Mr. Bumble was very far from being) by the strange
man's violence ; " but she clutched my gown, violently, with one
hand, which was partly closed ; and when I saw that she was dead,
and so femoved the hand by force, I found it clasped a scrap of dirty
paper."

" Which contained " interposed Monks, stretching forward.

" Nothing," replied the woman ; " it was a pawnbroker's duplicate."

" For what ? " demanded Monks.

*' In good time I'll tell yon," said the woman. " I judge that she
had kept the trinket, for some time, in the hope of turning it to better
account ; and then had pawned it ; and had saved or scraped together
money to pay the pawnbroker's interest year by year, and prevent its
running out ; so that if anything came of it, it could still be redeemed.
Nothing had come of it ; and, as I tell you, she died with the scrap of
paper, all worn and tattered, in her hand. The time was out in two
days ; I thought something might one day come of it too ; and so
redeemed the pledge."

" Where is it now ? " asked Monks quickly.

" There" replied the woman. And, as if glad to be relieved of it,
she hastily threw upon the table a small kid bag scarcely large enough
for a French watch, which Monks pouncing upon, tore open with
trembling hands. It contained a little gold locket : in which were two
locks of hair, and a plain gold wedding-ring.

" It has the word ' Agnes ' engraved on the inside," said the woman.
" There is a blank left for the surname ; and then follows the date ;
which is within a year before the child was bom. I found out that."

" And this is all ? " said Monks, after a close and eager scrutiny of
the contents of the little packet.

" All," replied the woman.

Mr. Bumble drew a long breath, as if he were glad to find that the
Btory was over, and no mention made of taking the five-and-twenty
pounds back again ; and now he took courage to wipe off the perspira-
tion which had been trickling over his nose, unchecked, during the
whole of the previous dialogue.

" I know nothing of the story, beyond what I can guess at," said his
wife addressing Monks, after a short silence ; " and I want to know
nothing ; for it's safer not. But I may ask you two questions, may I ? "

" You may ask," said Monks, with some show of surprise ; " but
whether I answer or not is another question."

" — Which makes three," observed Mr. Bumble, essaying a stroke
of facetiousness.

" Is that what you expected to get from me ? " demanded the matron.

" It is," replied Monks. " The other question ? "

" What you propose to do with it ? Can it be used against me ? "

" Never," rejoined Monks ; " nor against me either. See here !
But don't move a step forward, or your life is not worth a bulrush."

With these words, he suddenly wheeled the table aside, and pulling

234 Oliver Twist.

an iron ring in the boarding, threw back a large trap-door which
opened close at Mr. Bumble's feet, and caused that gentleman to retire
several paces backward, with groat precipitation.

"Look down," said Monks, lowering the lantern into the gulf.
" Don't fear me. I could have let you down, quietly enough, when
you were seated over it, if that had been my game."

Thus encouraged, the matron drew near to the brink ; and even Mr.
Bumble himself, impelled by curiosity, ventured to do the same. The
turbid water, swollen by the heavy rain, was rushing rapidly on
below ; and all other sounds were lost in the noise of its plashing and
eddying against the green and slimy piles. There had once been a
water-mill beneath ; the tide foaming and chafing round the few rotten
stakes, and fragments of machinery that yet remained, seemed to dart
onward, with a new impulse, when freed from the obstacles which had
unavailingly attempted to stem its headlong course.

" If you flung a man's body down there, where would it be to-morrow
morning ? " said Monks, swinging the lantern to and fro in the dark
well.

" Twelve miles down the river, and cut to pieces besides," replied
Bumble, recoiling at the thought.

Monks drew the little packet from his breast, where he had
hurriedly thrust it ; and tying it to a leaden weight, which had formed
a part of some pulley, and was lying on the floor, dropped it into the
stream. It fell straight, and true as a die ; clove the water with a
scarcely audible splash ; and was gone.

The three looking into each other's faces, seemed to breathe more
freely.

" There ! " said Monks, closing the trap-door, which fell heavily
back into its former position. " If the sea ever gives up its dead, as
books say it will, it will keep its gold and silver to itself, and that
trash among it. We have nothing more to say, and may break up
our pleasant party."

" By all means," observed Mr. Bumble, with great alacrity.

" You'll keep a quiet tongue in your head, will you ? " said Monks,
with a threatening look. " I am not afraid of your wife."

" You may depend upon me, young man," answered Mr. Bumble,
bowing himself gradually towards the ladder, with excessive polite-
ness. " On everybody's account, young man ; on my own, you know,
Mr. Monks."

" I am glad, for your sake, to hear it," remarked Monks. " Light
your lantern ! And get away from here as fast as you can."

It was fortunate that the conversation terminated at this point, or
Mr. Bumble, who had bowed himself to within six inches of the ladder,
would infallibly have pitched headlong into the room below. He
lighted his lantern from that which Monks had detached from the
rope, and now carried in his hand ; and making no effort to prolong
the discourse, descended in silence, followed by his wife. Monks

<l^ye e^'/c^n ^-^y tn(t?^^/^y>^^</^

Mr. Sikes as an Invalid. 235

brought up the rear, after pausing on the steps to satisfy himself that
there were no other sounds to be heard than the beating of the rain
without, and the rushing of the water.

They traversed the lower room, slowly, and with caution ; for
Monks started at every shadow ; and Mr. Bumble, holding his lantern
a foot above the ground, walked not only with remarkable care, but
with a marvellously light step for a gentleman of his figure : looking
nervously about him for hidden trap-doors. The gate at which they
had entered, was softly unfastened and opened by Monks ; merely
exchanging a nod with their mysterious acquaintance, the married
couple emerged into the wet and darkness outside.

They were no sooner gone, than Monks, who appeared to entertain
an invincible repugnance to being left alone, called to a boy who had
been hidden somewhere below. Bidding him go first, and bear the
light, he returned to the chamber he had just quitted.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

INTRODUCES SOME EE8PECTABLB CHARACTEBS WITH WHOM THE READEU
IS ALREADY ACQUAINTED, AND SHOWS HOW MONKS AND THE JEW
LAID THEIR WORTHY HEADS TOGETHER.

On the evening following that upon which the three worthies men-
tioned in the last chapter, disposed of their little matter of business
as therein narrated, Mr. William Sikes, awakening from a nap, drowsily
growled forth an inquiry what time of night it was.

The room in which Mr. Sikes propounded this question, was not
one of those he had tenanted, previous to the Chertsey expedition,
although it was in the same quarter of the town, and was situated at
no great distance from his former lodgings. It was not, in appear-
ance, so desirable a habitation as his old quarters : being a mean and
badly-furnished apartment, of very limited size ; lighted only by one
smaU window in the shelving roof, and abutting on a close and dirty
lane. Nor were there wanting other indications of the good gentle-
man's having gone down in the world of late ; for a great scarcity of
furniture, and total absence of comfort, together with the disappearance
of all such small moveables as spare clothes and linen, bespoke a state
of extreme poverty ; while the meagi-e and attenuated condition of Mr.
Sikes himself would have fully confirmed these symptoms, if they had
stood in any need of corroboration.

The housebreaker was lying on the bed, wrapped in his white great-
coat, by way of dressing-gown, and displaying a set of features in no
degree improved by the cadaverous hue of illness, and the addition of
a soiled nightcap^ and a stifif, black beard of a week's growth. The

236 Oliver Twist,

dog sat at the bedside: now eyeing his master with a wistful look,
and now pricking his ears, and uttering a low growl as some noise in
the street, or in the lower part of the house, attracted his attention.
Seated by the window, busily engaged in patching an old waistcoat
which formed a portion of the robber's ordinary dress, was a female :
so pale and reduced with watching and privation, that there would
have been considerable diflSculty in recognising her as the same
Nancy who has already figured in this tale, but for the voice in which
she replied to Mr. Sikes's question.

" Not long gone seven," said the girl. " How do you feel to-night,
Bill?"

" As weak as water," replied Mr. Sikes, with an imprecation on his
eyes and limbs. " Here ; lend us a hand, and let me get off this
thundering bed anyhow."

Illness had not improved Mr. Sikes's temper ; for, as the girl raised
him up and led him to a chair, he muttered various curses on her
awkwardness, and struck her.

" Whining are you ? " said Sikes. " Come ! Don't stand snivelling
there. If yon can't do anything better than that, cut off altogether.
D'ye hear me ? "

" I hear you," replied the girl, turning her face aside, and forcing a
laugh. " What fancy have yon got in your head now ? "

" Oh ! you've thought better of it, have you ? " growled Sikes,
marking the tear which trembled in her eye. "All the better for
you, you have."

"Why, you don't mean to say, you'd be hard upon me to-night,
Bill," said the girl, laying her hand upon his shoulder.

" No ! " cried Mr. Sikes. " Why not ? "

" Such a number of nights," said the girl, with a touch of woman's
tenderness, which communicated something like sweetness of tone,
even to her voice : " such a number of nights as I've been patient
with you, nursing and caring for you, as if you had been a child : and
this the first that I've seen you like yourself; you wouldn't have
served me as you did just now, if you'd thought of that, wQpld you ?
Come, come ; say you wouldn't."

" Well, then," rejoined Mr. Sikes, " I wouldn't. Why, damme,
now, the girl's whining again ! "

" It's nothing," said the girl, throwing herself into a chair. " Don't
you seem to mind me. It'll soon be over."

" What'll be over ? " demanded Mr. Sikes in a savage voice. " What
foolery are you up to, now, again ? Get up and bustle about, and
don't come over me with your woman's nonsense."

At any other time, this remonstrance, and the tone in which it was
delivered, would have had the desired effect ; but the girl being really
weak and exhausted, dropped her head over the back of the chair, and
fainted, before Mr. Sikes could get out a few of the appropriate oaths
with which, on similar occasions, he was accustomed to garnish his

<-y'^:^<^Ai^a;^^/2ya^?z^fyJi^^

Mr. Fagiti as a Sick- Visitor. 237

threats. Not knowing, very well, what to do, in this uncommon
emergency ; for Miss Nancy's hysterics were usually of that violent
kind which the patient fights and struggles out of, without much
assistance ; Mr. Sikes tried a little blasphemy : and finding that mode
of treatment wholly ineflfectual, called for assistance.

" What's the matter here, my dear ? " said Fagin, looking in.

" Lend a hand to the girl, can't you ? " replied Sikes impatiently.
" Don't stand chattering and grinning at me ! "

With an exclamation of surprise, Fagin hastened to tho girl's
assistance, while Mr. John Dawkins (otherwise the Artful Dodger),
who had followed his venerable friend into the room, hastily deposited
on the floor a bundle with which he was laden ; and snatching a bottle
from the grasp of Master Charles Bates who came close at his heels,
uncorked it in a twinkling with his teeth, and poured a portion of its
contents down the patient's throat : previously taking a taste, himself,
to prevent mistakes.

" Give her a whiflf of fresh air with the bellows, Charley," said Mr.
Dawkins; "and you slap her hands, Fagin, while Bill undoes the
petticuts."

These united restoratives, administered with great energy : especially
that department consigned to Master Bates, who appeared to consider
his share in the proceedings, a piece of unexampled pleasantry : were
not long in producing the desired effect. The girl gradually recovered
her senses ; and, staggering to a chair by the bedside, hid her face
upon the pillow : leaving Mr. Sikes to confront the new-comers, in
some astonishment at their unlooked-for appearance.

" Why, what evil wind has blowed you here ? " he asked Fagin.

" No evil wind at all, my dear, for evil winds blow nobody any
good ; and I've brought something good with me, that you'll be glad
to see. Dodger, my dear, open the bundle ; and give Bill the little
trifles that we spent all our money on, this morning."

In compliance with Mr. Fagin's request, the Artful untied this
bundle, which was of large size, and formed of an old table-cloth ;
and handed the articles it contained, one by one, to Charley Bates :
who placed them on the table, with various encomiums on their rarity
and excellence.

"Sitch a rabbit pie. Bill," exclaimed that young gentleman, dis-
closing to view a huge pasty ; " sitch delicate creeturs, with sitch
tender limbs. Bill, that the wery bones melt in your mouth, and there's
no occasion to pick 'em ; half a pound of seven and sixpenny green, so
precious strong that if you mix it with biling water, it'll go nigh to
blow the lid of the tea-pot off; a pound and a lialf of moist sugar that
the niggers didn't work at all at, aforo they got it up to sitch a pitch
of goodness, — oh no ! Two half-quartern brans ; pound of best fresh ;
piece of double Glo'ster ; and, to wind up all, some of the richest sort
you ever lushed ! "

Uttering this last panegyric, Master Bates produced, &om one of

238 Oliver Twist

his extensive pockets, a full-sized wine-bottle, carefully corked ; while
Mr. Dawkins, at the same instant, poured out a wine-glassful of raw
spirits from the bottle he carried : which the invalid tossed down his
throat without a moment's hesitation.

" Ah ! " said Fagin, rubbing his hands with great satisfaction.
*' You'll do, Bill ; you'll do now."

" Do ! " exclaimed Mr. Sikes ; " I might h^ve been done for, twenty
times over, afore you'd have done anything to help me. What do you
mean by leaving a man in this state, three weeks and more, you false-
hearted wagabond ? "

" Only hear him, boys ! " said Fagin, shrugging his shoulders.
" And us come to bring him all these beau-ti-ful things."

" The things is well enough in tlieir way," observed Mr. Sikes : a
little soothed as he glanced over the table ; " but what have you got
to say for yourself, why you should leave me here, down in the mouth,
health, blunt, and everything else ; and take no more notice of me, all this
mortal time, than if I was that 'ere dog. — Drive him down, Charley ! "

" I never see such a jolly dog as that," cried Master Bates, doing as
he was desired. " Smelling the grub like a old lady a going to market !
He'd make his fortun on the stage that dog would, and rewive the
drayma besides."

" Hold your din," cried Sikes, as the dog retreated under the bed :
still growling angrily. " "What have you got to say for yourself, yoti
withered old fence, eh ? "

" I was away from London, a week and more, my dear, on a plant,"
replied the Jew.

" And what about the other fortnight ? " demanded Sikes. " What
about the other fortnight that you've left me lying here, like a sick rat
in his hole ? "

" I couldn't help it. Bill. I can't go into a long explanation before
company ; but I couldn't help it, upon my honour."

" Upon your what ? " growled Sikes, with excessive disgust.
" Here ! Cut me oflf a piece of that pie, one of you boys, to take the
taste of that out of my mouth, or it'll choke me dead."

" Don't be out of temper, my dear," urged Fagin, submissively. " I
have never forgot you. Bill ; never once."

" No ! I'll pound it that you han't," replied Sikes, with a bitter
grin. " You've been scheming and plotting away, every hour that I
have laid shivering and burning here ; and Bill was to do this ; and
Bill was to do that ; and Bill was to do it all, dirt cheap, as soon as
he got well : and was quite poor enough for your work. If it hadn't
been for the girl, I might have died."

" There now. Bill," remonstrated Fagin, eagerly catching at the
word. " If it hadn't been for the girl ! Who but poor ould Fagiu
was the means of your having such a handy girl about you ? "

" He says true enough there ! " said Nancy, coming hastily forward.
" Let him be ; let him be."

Nancy goes Home with the Jew. 239

Nancy's appearance gave a new turn to the conversation ; for tbo
boys, receiving a sly wink from the wary old Jew, began to ply her
with liquor: of which, however, she took very sparingly; while
Fagin, assuming an unusual flow of spirits, gradually brought Mr.
Sikes into a better temper, by affecting to regard his threats as a little
pleasant banter ; and, moreover, by laughing very heartily at one or
two rough jokps, which, after repeated applications to the spirit-bottle,
he condescended to make.

" It's all very well," said Mr. Sikes ; " but I must have some blunt
from you to-night."

" I haven't a piece of coin about me," replied the Jew,

" Then you've got lots at home," retorted Sikes ; " and I must have
some from there."

" Lots ! " cried Fagin, holding up his hands. " I haven't so much
as would "

"I don't know how much you've got, and I dare say you hardly
know yourself, as it would take a pretty long time to coiint it," said
Sikes ; " but I must have some to-night ; and that's flat."

" Well, well," said Fagin, with a sigh, " I'll send the Artful round
presently."

" You won't do nothing of the kind," rejoined Mr. Sikes. " The
Ai-tful's a deal too artful, and would forget to come, or lose his way,
or get dodged by traps and so be perwented, or anything for an
excuse, if you put him up to it. Nancy shall go to the ken and fetch
it, to make all sure ; and I'll lie down and have a snooze while she's
gone."

After a great deal of haggling and squabbling, Fagin beat down
the amount of the required advance from five pounds to three pounds
four and sixpence: protesting with many solemn asseverations that
that would only leave him eighteen-pence to keep house with ; Mr.
Sikes sullenly remarking that if he couldn't get any more he must be
content Avith that, Nancy prepared to accompany him home ; while the
Dodger and Master Bates put the eatables in the cupboard. The Jew
then, taking leave of his aflfectionate friend, returned homeward,
attended by Nancy and the boys : Mr. Sikes, meanwhile, flinging him-
self on the bed, and composing himself to sleep away the time until
the young lady's return.

In due course, they arrived at Fagin's abode, where they found
Toby Cracldt and Mr. Chitling intent upon their fifteenth game at
cribbage, which it is scarcely necessary to say the latter gentleman
lost, and with it, his fifteenth and last sixpence : much to the amuse-
ment of his young friends. Mr. Crackit, apparently somewhat ashamed
at being found relaxing himself with a gentleman so much his inferior
in station and mental endowments, yawned, and inquiring after Sikes,
took up his hat to go.

" Has nobody been, Toby ? " asked Fagin.

" Not a living log," answered Mr. Crackit, pulling up his collar ; " it's

240 Oliver Twist.

been as dull as swipes. You ought to stand something handsome,
Fagin, to recompense me for keeping house so long. Damme, I'm as
flat as a juryman ; and should have gone to sleep, as fast as Newgate,
if I hadn't had the good natur' to amuse this youngster. Horrid dull,
I'm blessed if I an't ! "

With these and other ejaculations of the same kind, Mr. Toby
Crackit swept up his winnings, and crammed them into his waistcoat
pocket with a haughty air, as though such small jjieces of silver were
wholly beneath the consideration of a man of his figure ; this done, ho
swaggered out of the room, with so much elegance and gentility, that
Mr. Chitling, bestowing numerous admiring glances on his legs and
boots till they were out of sight, assured the cJbmpany that he con-
sidered his acquaintance cheap at fifteen sixpences an interview, and
that he didn't value his losses the snap of his little finger.

" Wot a rum chap you are, Tom ! " said Master Bates, highly
amused by this declaration.

" Not a bit of it," replied Mr. Chitling. " Am I, Fagin ? '*

" A very clever fellow, my dear," said Fagin, patting him on the
shoulder, and winking to his other pupils.

" And Mr. Crackit is a heavy swell ; an't he, Fagin ? " asked Tom.

" No doubt at all of that, my dear."

" And it is a creditable thing to have his acquaintance ; an't it,
Fagin ? " pursued Tom.

"Very much so, indeed, my dear. They're only jealous, Tojn,
because he won't give it to them."

" Ah ! " cried Tom, triumphantly, " that's where it is ! He has
cleaned me out. But I can go and earn some more, when I like ;
can't I, Fagin ? "

" To be sure yon can, and the sooner you go the better, Tom ; so
make up your loss at once, and don't lose any more time. Dodger !
Charley ! It's time you were on the lay. Come ! It's near ten, and
nothing done yet."

In obedience to this hint, the boys, nodding to Nancy, took up their
hats, and left the room ; the Dodger and his vivacious friend in-
dulging, as they went, in many witticisms at the expense of Mr.
Chitling ; in whose conduct, it is but justice to say, there was nothing
very conspicuous or peculiar : inasmuch as there are a great number
of spirited young bloods upon town, who pay a much higher price
than Mr. Chitling for being seen in good society : and a great number
of fine gentlemen (composing the good society aforesaid) who establish
their reputation upon very much the same footing as flash Toby
Crackit.

" Now," said Fagin, when they had left the room, " I'll go and get
you that cash, Nancy. This is only the key of a little cupboard
where I keep a fe^v odd things the boys get, my dear. I never lock
up my money, for I've got none to lock up, my dear — ha ! ha ! ha ! —
none to lock up. It's a poor trade, Nancy, and no thanks ; but I'm

Fagin's Visitor. 241

fond of seeing the young people about me ; and I bear it all, I bear it
all. Hush ! " be said, hastily concealing the key in his breast ; '♦ who's
that ? Listen ! "

Tlie girl, who was sitting at the table with her arms folded, appeared
in no way interested in the arrival : or to care whether the person,
whoever he was, came or went : until the murmur of a man's voice
reached her ears. The instant she caught the sound, she tore off
her bonnet and shawl, with the rapidity of lightning, and thrust them
under the table. The Jew, tm-ning round immediately afterwards,
she muttered a complaint of the heat : in a tone of languor that con-
trasted, very remarkably, with the extreme haste and violence of this
action : which, however, had been imobserved by Fagin, who had his
back towards her at the time.

" Bah ! " he whispered, as though nettled by the interruption ; " it's
the man I expected before ; he's coming down-stairs. Not a word
about the money while he's here, Nance. He won't stop long. Not
ten minutes, my dear."

Laying his skinny forefinger upon his lip, the Jew carried a candle
to the door, as a man's step was heard upon the stairs without. Ho
reached it, at the same moment as the visitor, who, coming hastily
into the room, was close upon the girl before he observed her.

It was Monks.

" Only one of my yoimg people," said Fagin, observing that Monks
drew back, on beholding a stranger. " Don't move, Nancy."

The girl drew closer to the table, and glancing at Monks with an
air of careless levity, withdrew her eyes ; but as he turned his towards
Fagin, she stole another look : so keen and searching, and full of
purpose, that if there had been any bystander to observe the change,
he could hardly have believed the two looks to have proceeded from
the same person.

" Any news ? " inquired Fagin.

" Great."

" And.— and— good ? " asked Fagin, hesitating as though he feared
to vex the other man by being too sanguine.

" Not bad, any way," replied Monks with a smile. " I have been
prompt enough this time. Let me have a word with you."

The girl drew closer to the table, and made no offer to leave the
room, although she could see that Monks was pointing to her. The
Jew : perhaps fearing she might say something aloud about the money,
if he endeavoured to get rid of her : pointed upward, and took Monks
out of the room.

" Not that infernal hole we were in before," she could hear the man
say as they went up-stairs. Fagin laughed ; and making some reply
which did not reach her, seemed, by the creaking of the boards, to
lead his companion to the second story.

Before the sound of their footsteps had ceased to echo through the
house, the girl had slipped oflf her shoes ; and drawing her gown

242 Oliver Twist.

loosely over her head, and muffling her arms in it, stood at the door,
listening with breathless interest. The moment the noise ceased, she
glided from the room ; ascended the stairs with incredible softness and
silence ; and was lost in the gloom above.

The room remained deserted for a quarter of an hour or more ; the
girl glided back with the same unearthly tread ; and, immediately
afterwards, the two men were heard descending. Monks went at once
into the street ; and the Jew crawled up-stairs again for the money.
Wlien he returned, the girl was adjusting her shawl and bonnet, as if
preparing to be gone.

" Why, Nance," exclaimed the Jew, starting back as he put down
the candle, " how pale you are ! "

" Pale ! " echoed the girl, shading her eyes with her hands, as if to
look steadily at him.

" Quite horrible. "What have you been doing to yourself'? "

" Nothing that I know of, except sitting in this close place for I
don't know how long and all," replied the girl carelessly. " Come !
Lot me get back ; that's a dear."

With a sigh for every piece of money, Fagin told the amount into
her hand. They parted without more conversation, merely inter-
changing a " good-night."

When the girl got into the open street, she sat down upon a door-
stop ; and seemed, for a few moments, wholly bewildered and unable
to pursue her way. Suddenly she arose ; and hurrying on, in a direc-
tion quite opposite to that in which Sikes was awaiting her return,
quickened her pace, until it gradually resolved into a violent run.
After completely exhausting herself, she stopped to take breath : and,
as if suddenly recollecting herself, and deploring her inability to do
something she was bent upon, wrung her hands, and burst into tears.

It might be that her tears relieved her, or that she felt the full
hopelessness of her condition ; but she turned back ; and hurrying
with nearly as great rapidity in the contrary direction: partly to
recover lost time, and partly to keep pace with the violent current of
her own thoughts : soon reached the dwelling where she had left the
house-breaker.

If she betrayed any agitation, when she presented herself to Mr.
Sikes, he did not observe it ; for merely inquiring if she had brought
the money, and receiving a reply in the affirmative, he uttered a
growl of satisfaction, and replacing his head upon the pillow, resumed
the slumbers which her arrival had interrupted.

It was fortunate for her that the possession of money occasioned him
60 much employment next day in the way of eating and drinking ; and
withal had so beneficial an effect in smoothing down the asperities of
his temper ; that he had neither time nor inclination to be very critical
upon her behaviour and deportment. That she had all the abstracted
and nervous manner of one who is on the eve of some h'Si^ and hazardous
step, which it has required no common struggle to resolve upon, would

A Cotnposing Draught, 243

have been obvious to the lynx-eyed Fagin, who would most probably
have taken the alarm at once ; but Mr. Sikes lacking the niceties of
discrimination, and being troubled with no more subtle misgivings
than those which resolve themselves into a dogged roughness of
behaviour towards everybody ; and being, furthermore, in an unusually
amiable condition, as has been already observed ; saw nothing unusual
in her demeanour, and indeed, troubled himself so little about her,
that, had her agitation been far more perceptible than it was, it would
have been very unlikely to have awakened his suspicions.

As that day closed in, the girl's excitement increased ; and, when
night came on, and she sat by, watching until the house-breaker should
drink himself asleep, there was an unusual paleness in her cheek, and
a fire in her eye, that even Sikes observed with astonishment.

Mr. Sikes being weak from the fever, was lying in bed, taking hot
water with his gin to render it less inflammatory ; and had pushed his
glass towards Nancy to be replenished for tho third or fourth time,
when these symptoms first struck him.

" Why, burn my body ! " said the man, raising himself on his hands
as ho stared tho girl in the face. " You look like a corpse como to
life again. What's the matter ? "

'* Matter ! " replied the girl. " Nothing. What do you look at me
60 hard for ? "

" What foolery is this ? " demanded Sikes, grasping her by the arm,
and shaking her roughly. "What is it? What do you mean?
What are you thinking of? "

" Of many things. Bill," replied the girl, shivering, and as she did so,
pressing her hands upon her eyes. " But, Lord ! What odds in that?"

The tone of forced gaiety in which the last words were spoken,
seemed to produce a deeper impression on Sikes than the ^nld and
rigid look which had preceded them.

" I tell you wot it is," said Sikes ; " if you haven't caught the fever,
and got it comin' on, now, there's something more than usual in the

wind, and something dangerous too. You're not a-going to . No,

damme ! you wouldn't do that ! "

" Do what ? " asked the girl.

" There ain't," said Sikes, fixing his eyes upon her, and muttering
the words to himself; " there ain't a stauncher-hearted gal going, or
I'd have cut her throat three months ago. She's got the fever coming
on ; that's it."

Fortifying himself with this assurance, Sikes drained the glass to
the bottom, and then, with many grumbling oaths, called for his
physic. The girl jumped up, with great alacrity ; poured it quickly
out, but with her back towards him ; and held the vessel to his lips,
while he drank off the contents.

" Now," said the robber, " come and sit aside of me, and put on
your own face ; or I'll ftUer it so, that you won't know it again when
you do want it."

244 Oliver Twist.

The girl obeyed. Sikes, locking her hand in his, fell back upon
the pillow : turning his eyes upon her face. They closed ; opened
again; closed once more; again opened. He shifted his position
restlessly; and, after dozing again, and again, for two or three
minutes, and as often springing up with a look of terror, and gazing
vacantly about him, was suddenly stricken, as it were, while in the
very attitude of rising, into a deep and heavy sleep. The grasp of
his hand relaxed ; the upraised arm fell languidly by his side ; and he
lay like one in a profound trance.

" The laudanum has taken effect at last," murmured the girl, as
she rose from the bedside. " I may be too late, even now."

She hastily dressed herself in her bonnet and shawl : looking fear-
fully round, from time to time, as if, despite the sleeping draught, she
expected every moment to feel the pressure of Sikes's heavy hand upon
her shoulder; then, stooping softly over the bed, she kissed the
robber's lips; and then opening and closing the room-door with
noiseless touch, hurried from the house.

A watchman was crying half-past nine, down a dark passage
through which she had to pass, in gaining the main thoroughfare.

" Has it long gone the half-hour ? " asked the girl.

"It'll strike the hour in another quarter," said the man: raising
his lantern to her face.

*' And I cannot get there in less than an hour or more," muttered
Nancy: brushing swiftly past him, and gliding rapidly down the
street.

Many of the shops were already closing in the back lanes and
avenues through which she tracked her way, in making from Spital-
fields towards the West-End of London. The clock struck ten,
increasing her impatience. She tore along the narrow jiavement :
elbowing the passengers from side to side ; and darting almost under
the horses' heads, crossed crowded streets, where clusters of persons
were eagerly watching their opportunity to do the like.

" The woman is mad ! " said the people, turning to look after her as
she rushed away.

When she reached the more wealthy quarter of the town, the streets
were comparatively deserted ; and here her headlong progress excited
a still greater curiosity in the stragglers whom she hurried past.
Some quickened their pace behind, as though to see whither she was
hastening at such an unusual rate ; and a few made head upon her,
and looked back, surprised at her undiminished speed ; but they fell
off one by one ; and when she neared her place of destination, she was
alone.

It was a family hotel in a quiet but handsome street near Hyde
Park. As the brilliant light of the lamp which burnt before its door,
guided her to the spot, the clock struck eleven. She had loitered for
a few paces as though irresolute, and making up her mind to advance ;
but the sound determined her, and she stepped into the hall. The

Nancy at tJie Hotel. 245

porter's seat was vacant. She looked round with an air of incertitude,
and advanced towards the stairs.

" Now, young woman ! " said a smartly-dressed female, looking out
from a door behind her, " who do you want here ? "

" A lady who is stopping in this house," answered the girl.

" A lady ! " was the reply, accompanied with a scomfal look.
"What lady?"

" Miss Maylie," said Nancy.

The young woman, who had by this time, noted her appearance,
replied only by a look of virtuous disdain ; and summoned a man to
answer her. To him, Nancy repeated her request.

" What name am I to say ? " asked the waiter.

" It's of no use saying any," replied Nancy.

" Nor business ? " said the man.

" No, nor that neither," rejoined the girl. " I must see the lady."

" Come ! " said the man, pushing her towards the door. " None of
this. Take yourself off."

" I shall be canied out, if I go ! " said the girl violently ; " and I
can make that a job that two of you won't like to do. Isn't there
anybody here," she said, looking round, "that will see a simple
message carried for a poor wretch like me ? "

This appeal produced an effect on a good-tempered-faced man-cook,
who with some other of the servants was looking on, and who stepped
forward to interfere.

" Take it up for her, Joe ; can't you ? " said this person.

"What's the good?" replied the man. "You don't suppose the
young lady will see such as her ; do you ? "

This allusion to Nancy's doubtful character, raised a vast quantity
of chaste wrath in the bosoms of four housemaids, who remarked, with
great fervour, that the creature was a disgi-ace to her sex ; and strongly
advocated her being thrown, ruthlessly, into the kennel.

"Do what you like with me," said the girl, turning to the men
again ; " but do what I ask you first, and I ask yon to give this
message for God Almighty's sake."

The soft-hearted cook added his intercession, and the result was
that the man who had firet appeared undertook its delivery.

" What's it to be ? " said the man, with one foot on the stairs.

"That a young woman earnestly asks to speak to Miss Maylie
alone," said Nancy ; " and that if the lady will only hear the first
word she has to say, she will know whether to hear her business, or
to have her turned out of doors as an impostor."

" I say," said the man, " you're coming it strong ! "

" You give the message," said the girl firmly ; " and let me hear
the answer."

The man ran up-stairs. Nancy remained, pale and almost breath-
less, listening with quivering lip to the very audible expressions of
scorn, of which the chaste housemaids were very proMc; and of

246 Oliver Twist.

which they became still more bo, when the man returned, and said the
young woman was to walk up-stairs.

" It's no good being proper in this world," said the first housemaid.

" Brass can do better than the gold what has stood the fire," said
the second.

The third contented herself with wondering " what ladies was made
of ; " and the fourth took the first iu a quartette of " Shameful ! " with
which the Dianas concluded.

Eegardless of all this : for she had weightier matters at heart :
Nancy followed the man, with trembling limbs, to a small ante-
chamber, lighted by a lamp from the ceiling. Here he left her, and
retired.

CHAPTER XL.

A STRANGE INTERVIEW, WHICH IS A SEQUEL TO THE LAST CHAPTER.

The girl's life had been squandered in the streets, and among the
most noisome of the stews and dons of London, but there was some-
thing of the woman's original nature left in her still ; and when she
heard a light step approaching the door opposite to that by which she
had entered, and thought of the wide contrast which the small room
would in another moment contain, she felt burdened with the sense of
her own deep shame, and shrank as though she could scarcely bear
the presence of her with whom she had sought this interview.

But struggling with these better feelings was pride, — the vice of
the lowest and most debased creatures no less than of the high and
self-assured. The miserable companion of thieves and ruffians, the
fallen outcast of low haunts, the associate of the scourings of the jails
and hulks, living within the shadow of the gallows itself, — even this
degraded being felt too proud to betray a feeble gleam of the womanly
feeling which she thought a weakness, but which alone connected her
with that humanity, of which her wasting life had obliterated so many,
many traces when a very child.

She raised her eyes sufficiently to observe that the figure which
presented itself was that of a slight and beautiful girl ; then, bending
them on the ground, she tossed her head with affected carelessness as
she said :

" It's a hard matter to get to see you, lady. If I had taken offence,
and gone away, as many would have done, you'd have been sorry for
it one day, and not without reason either."

" I am very sorry if any one has behaved harshly to you," replied
Rose. " Do not think of that. Tell me why you wished to see me.
I am the person you inquired for."

Two Sister- Women. 247

The kind tone of this answer, the sweet voice, the gentle manner,
the absence of any accent of hanghtiness or displeasure, took the girl
completely by surprise, and she burst into tears.

" Oh, lady, lady I " she said, clasping her hands passionately before
her face, " if there was more like you, there would bo fewer like me, —
there would — there would ! "

"Sit down," said Rose, earnestly. "If you are in poverty or
affliction I shall be truly glad to relieve you if I can, — I shall indeed.
Sit down."

" Let mo stand, lady," said the giil, still weeping, " and do not
speak to me so kindly till you know me better. It is growing late.
Is — is — that door shut ? "

" Yes," said Rose, recoiling a few steps, as if to be nearer assistance
in case she should require it. " Why ? "

" Because," said the girl, " I am about to put my life, and the lives
of others in your hands. I am the girl that dragged little Oliver back
to old Fagin's, on the night he went out from the house in Penton-
viUe."

" You ! " said Rose Maylie.

" I, lady 1 " replied the girl. " I am the infamous creature you have
heard of, that lives among the thieves, and that never from the first
moment I can recollect my eyes and senses opening on London streets
have known any better life, or kinder words than they have given me,
so help me God ! Do not mind shrinking openly from me, lady. I
am younger than you would think, to look at me, but I am well used
to it. The poorest women fall back, as I make my way along the
crowded pavement."

" What dreadful things are these ! " said Rose, involuntai-ily falling
from her strange companion.

" Thank Heaven upon your knees, dear lady," cried the girl, " that
you had fiiends to care for and keep you in your childhood, and that
you were never in the midst of cold and hunger, and riot and drunken-
ness, and — and — something worse than all — as I have been from my
cradle. I may use the word, for the alley and the gutter were mine,
as they will be my death-bed."

" I pity you ! " said Rose, in a broken voice. " It wrings my heart
to hear you 1 "

" Heaven bless you for your goodness ! " rejoined the girl. " If
you knew what I am sometimes, you would pity me, indeed. But I
have stolen away from those who would surely murder me, if they
knew I had been here, to tell yon what I have oveiheard. Do you
know a man named Monks ? "

"No," said Rose.

" He knows you," replied the girl ; " and knew you wei-e here, for
it was by hearing him tell the place that I found you out."

" I never heard the name," said Rose.

" Then he goes by some other amongst us," rejoined the girl, " which

24S Oliver Twist.

I more than thought before. Some time ago, and soon after Oliver
was put into your house on the night of the robbery, I — suspecting
this man — listened to a conversation held between him and Fagin in
the dark. I found out, from what I heard, that Monks — the m8.n I
asked you about, you know "

" Yes," said Rose, " I understand."

" — That Monks," pursued the girl, "had seen him accidentally
with two of our boys on the day we first lost him, and had known him
directly to be the same child that he was watching for, though I
couldn't make out why. A bargain was struck with Fagin, that if
Oliver was got back he should have a certain sum ; and he was to
have more for making him a thief, which this Monks wanted for some
purpose of his own."

" For what purpose ? " asked Rose.

"He caught sight of my shadow on the wall as I listened, in the
hope of finding out," said the girl ; " and there are not many people
beside me that could have got out of their way in time to escape
discovery. But I did ; and I saw him no more till last night."

" And what occurred then ? "

" I'll tell you, lady. Last night he came again. Again they went
up-staii-s, and I, wrapping myself up so that my shadow should not
betray me, again listened at the door. The first words I heard Monks
say were these : ' So the only proofs of the boy's identity lie at the
bottom of the river, and the old hag that received them from the
mother is rotting in her coffin.' They laughed, and talked of his
success in doing this ; and Monks, talking on about the boy, and
getting very wild, said that though he had got the young devil's
money safely now, he'd rather have had it the other way ; for, what
a game it would have been to have brought down the boast of the
father's will, by driving him through every jail in town, and then
hauling him up for some capital felony which Fagin could easily
manage, after having made a good profit of him besides."

" What is all this ! " said Rose.

" The truth, lady, though it comes from my lips," replied the girl.
*■• Then, he said, with oaths common enough in my ears, but strange
to youi-s, that if he could gratify his hatred by taking the boy's life
without bringing his own neck in danger, he would ; but, as he couldn't,
he'd be upon the watch to meet him at every turn in life ; and if ho
took advantage of his birth and history, he might harm him yet. ' In
short, Fagin,' he says, ' Jew as you are, you never laid such snares as
I'll contrive for my young brother, Oliver.' "

" His brother ! " exclaimed Rose.

" Those were his words," said Nancy, glancing uneasily round, as
she had scarcely ceased to do, since she began to speak, for a vision of
Sikes haunted her perpetually. " And more. When he spoke of you
and the other lady, and said it seemed contrived by Heaven, or the
devil, against him, that Oliver should come into your hands, he laughed,

Help comes too late. 249

ftncl said there was some comfort in that too, for how many thousands
and hnndreds of thousands of pounds would you not give, if you had
them, to know who your two-legged spaniel was."

" You do not mean," said Rose, turning very pale, " to tell me that
this was said in earnest ? "

" He spoke in hard and angry eainest, if a man ever did," replied
the gild, shaking her head. " He is an earnest man when his hatred
is up. I know many who do worse things ; but I'd rather listen to
them all a dozen times, than to that Monks once. It is growing late,
and I have to reach home without suspicion of having been on such an
errand as this. I must get back quickly."

" But what can I do ? " said Eose. " To what use can I turn this
communication without you ? Back ! Why do you wish to return to
companions you paint in such terrible colours? If you repeat this
information to a gentleman whom I can summon in an instant from
the next room, you can be consigned to some place of safety without
half an hour's delay."

" I wish to go back," said the girl. " I must go back, because —
how can I tell such things to an innocent lady like you ? — because
among the men I have told you of, there is one : the most desperate
among them all : that I can't leave ; no, not even to be saved from the
life I am leading now."

"Your having interfered in this dear boy's behalf before," said
Eose ; " your coming here, at so great a risk, to tell me what you have
heard ; your manner, which convinces me of the truth of what you
say ; your evident contrition, and sense of shame ; all lead me to
believe that you might be yet reclaimed. Oh ! " said the earnest girl,
folding her hands as the tears coursed down her face, " do not turn a
deaf ear to the entreaties of one of your own sex ; the first — the first,
I do believe, who ever appealed to you in the voice of pity and com-
passion. Do hear my words, and let me save you yet, for better
things."

" Lady," cried the girl, sinking on her knees, " dear, sweet, angel
lady, you are the first that ever blessed me with such words as these,
and if I had heard them years ago, they might have turned me from
a life of sin and sorrow ; but it is too late, it is too late ! "

" It is never too late," said Eose, " for penitence and atonement."

" It is," cried the girl, writhing in the agony of her mind ; "I
cannot leave him now I I could not be his death."

" Why should you bo ? " asked Eose.

" Nothing could save him," cried the girl. " If I told others what
I have told you, and led to their being taken, he would be sure to die.
He is the boldest, and has been so cruel ! "

" Is it possible," cried Eose, " that for such a man as this, you can
resign every future hope, and the certainty of immediate rescue ? It
is madness."

" I don't know what it is," answered the girl ; " I only know that it

250 Oliver Twist.

is so, and not with me alone, but with hundreds of others as bad and
wretched as myself. I must go back. Whether it is God's wrath for
the wrong I have done, I do not know ; but I am drawn back to him
through every suffering and ill usage ; and I should be, I believe, if
I knew that I was to die by his hand at last."

" What am I to do ? " said Eose. " I should not let you depart
from me thus."

" You should, lady, and I know you will," rejoined the girl, rising.
" You will not stop my going because I have trusted in your goodness,
and forced no promise from you, as I might have done."

" Of what use, then, is the communication you have made ? " said
Eose. " This mystery must be investigated, or how will its disclosure
to me, benefit Oliver, whom you are anxious to serve ? "

" You must have some kind gentleman about you that will hear it
as a secret, and advise you what to do," rejoined the girl.

"But where can I find you again when it is necessary?" asked
Eose. " I do not seek to know where these dreadful people live, but
where will you be walking or passing at any settled period from this
time ? "

" Will you promise me that you will have my secret strictly kept,
and come alone, or with the only other person that knows it ; and that
I shall not be watched or followed ? " asked the girl.

" I promise you solemnly," answered Eose.

" Every Sunday night, from eleven until the clock strikes twelve,"
said the girl without hesitation, ' ' I will walk on London Bridge if I
am alive."

" Stay another moment," interposed Eose, as the girl moved
hurriedly towards the door. " Think once again on your own con-
dition, and the opportunity you have of escaping from it. You have
a claim on me : not only as the voluntary bearer of this intelligence,
but as a woman lost almost beyond redemption. Will you return to
this gang of robbers, and to this man, when a word can save you ?
What fascination is it that can take you back, and make you cling to
wickedness and misery ? Oh ! is there no chord in your heart that I
can touch ! Is there nothing left, to which I can appeal against this
terrible infatuation ! "

" When ladies as young, and good, and beautiful as you are," replied
the girl steadily, " give away your hearts, love will carry you all
lengths — even such as you, who have home, friends, other admirers,
everything, to fill them. When such as I, who have no certain roof
but the coffin-lid, and no friend in sickness or death but the hospital
nurse, set our rotten hearts on any man, and let him fill the place that
has been a blank through all our wretched lives, who can hope to cure
us ? Pity us, lady — pity us for having only one feeling of the woman
left, and for having that turned, by a heavy judgment, from a comfort
and a pride, into a new means of violence and suffering."

" You will," said Eose, after a pause, " take some money from me,

Hozv to act now? 251

which may enahlo you to live without dishonesty — at all events until
we meet again ? "

" Not a penny," replied the girl, waving her hand.

" Do not close your heart against all my efforts to help you," said
Rose, stepping gently forward. " I wish to seiTC you indeed."

" You would servo me best, lady," replied the gii-1, wringing her
hands, *' if you could take my life at once ; for I have felt more grief
to think of what I am, to-night, than I ever did before, and it would
be something not to die in the hell in which I have lived. God bless
you, sweet lady, and send as much happiness on your head as I have
brought shame on mine ! "

Thus speaking, and sobbing aloud, the unhappy creature turned
away; while Rose Maylie, overpowered by this extraordinary inter-
view, which had more the semblance of a rapid dream than an actual
occurrence, sank into a chair, and endeavoured to collect her wander-
ing thoughts.

CHAPTER XLI.

CONTAINING FRESH DISCOVERIES, AND SHOWING THAT SURPRISES, LIKE
MISFORTUNES, SELDOM COME ALONE.

Her situation was, indeed, one of no common trial and difficulty.
While she felt the most eager and burning desire to penetrate the
mystery in which Oliver's history was enveloped, she could not but
hold sacred the confidence which the miserable woman with whom
she had just conversed, had reposed in her, as a young and guileless
girl. Her words and manner Lad touched Rose Maylie's heart ; and,
mingled with her love for her young charge, and scarcely less intense
in its truth and fervour, was her fond wish to win the outcast back to
repentance and hope.

They purposed remaining in London only three days, prior to
departing for some weeks to a distant part of the coast. It was now
midnight of the first day. What course of action could she determine
upon, which could be adopted in eight-and-forty hours? Or how
could she postpone the journey without exciting suspicion ?

Mr. Losborne was with them, and would be for the next two days ;
but Rose was too well acquainted with the excellent gentleman's
impetuosity, and foresaw too clearly the wrath with which, in the first
explosion of his indignation, he would regard the instrument of Oliver's
recapture, to trust him with the secret, when her representations in
the girl's behalf could be seconded by no experienced person. These
were all reasons for the greatest caution and most circumspect beliaviour
in communicating it to Mrs. Maylie, whose first impulse would

252 Oliver Twist.

infallibly bo to hold a conference with the worthy doctor on the
subject. As to resorting to any legal adviser, even if she had known
how to do so, it was scarcely to be thought of, for the same reason.
Once the thought occurred to her of seeking assistance from Harry ;
but this awakened the recollection of their last parting, and it seemed
unworthy of her to call him back, when — the tears rose to her eyes as
she pursued this train of reflection — he might have by this time learnt
to forget her, and to be happier away.

Disturbed by these different reflections ; inclining now to one course
and then to another, and again recoiling from all, as each successive
consideration presented itself to her mind ; Kose passed a sleepless
and anxious night. After more communing with herself next day,
she arrived at the desperate conclusion of consulting Harry.

" If it be painful to him," she thought, " to come back here, how
painful it will be to me ! But perhaps he will not come ; he may
write, or he may come himself, and studiously abstain from meeting
me — he did when he went away. 1 hardly thought he would ; but it
was better for us both." And here Rose dropped the pen, and turned
away, as though the very paper which was to be her messenger should
not see her weep.

She had taken up the same pen, and laid it down again fifty times,
and had considered and reconsidered the first line of her letter without
writing the first word, when Oliver, who had been walking in the
streets, with Mr. Giles for a body-guard, entered the room in such
breathless haste and violent agitation, as seemed to betoken some new
cause of alarm.

" What makes you look so flurried ? " asked Rose, advancing to
meet him.

" I hardly know how ; I feel as if I should be choked," replied the
boy. " Oh dear ! To think that I should see him at last, and you
should be able to know that I have told you all the truth ! "

"I never thought you had told us anything but the truth," said
Rose, soothing him. " But what is this ? — of whom do you speak ? "

"I have seen the gentleman," replied Oliver, scarcely able to
articulate, " the gentleman who was so good to me — Mr. Brownlow,
that we have so often talked about."

« Where ? " asked Rose.

" Getting out of a coach," replied Oliver, shedding tears of delight,
" and going into b nouse. I didn't speak to him — I couldn't speak to
him, for he didn't see me, and I trembled so, that I was not able to
go up to him. But Giles asked, for me, whether he lived there, and
they said he did. Look here," said Oliver, opening a scrap of paper,
" here it is ; here's where he lives — I'm going there directly ! Oh,
dear me, dear me ! What shall I do when I come to see him and
hear him speak again ! "

With her attention not a little distracted by these and a great many
other incoherent exclamations of joy, Rose read the address, which

Rose visits Mr. Brownlow. 253

was Craven Street, in the Strand. She very soon determined upon"^
turning the discovery to account.

" Quick ! " she said. " Tell them to fetch a hackney-coach, and be
ready to go with me. I will take you there directly, without a
minute's loss of time. I will only tell my aunt that we arc going out
for an hour, and be ready as soon as you are."

Oliver needed no prompting to despatch, and in little more than
five minutes they were on their way to Craven Street. When they
arrived there, Eose left Oliver in the coach, under pretence of pre-
paring the old gentleman to receive him ; and sending up her card by
the servant, requested to see Mr. Brownlow on very pressing business.
The servant soon returned, to beg that she would walk up-stairs ; and
following him into an upper room. Miss Maylie was presented to an
elderly gentleman of benevolent appearance, in a bottle-green coat.
At no great distance from whom, was seatod another old gentleman,
in nankeen breeches and gaiters ; who did not look particularly
benevolent, and who was sitting with his hands clasped on the top of
a thick stick, and his chin propped thereupon.

"Dear me," said the gentleman, in the bottle-green coat, hastily
rising with great politeness, " I beg your pardon, young lady — I
imagined it was some importunate person who — I beg you will excuse
me. Be seated, pray."

" Mr. Brownlow, I believe, sir ? " said Eose, glancing from the other
gentleman to the one who had spoken.

" That is my name," said the old gentleman. " This is my friend,
Mr. Grim wig. Grimwig, will you leave us for a few minutes ? "

" I believe," interposed Miss Maylie, " that at this period of our
interview, 1 need not give that gentleman the trouble of going away.
If I am correctly informed, he is cognizant of the business on which
I wish to speak to you."

Mr. Brownlow inclined his head. Mr. Grimwig, who had made
one very stiff bow, and risen from his chair, made another very stiff
bow, and dropped into it again.

"I shall surprise you very much, I have no doubt," said Eose,
naturally embarrassed ; " but you once showed great benevolence and
goodness to a very dear young friend of mine, and I am sure you will
take an interest in hearing of him again."

" Indeed ! " said Mi-. Brownlow.

" OUver Twist you knew him as," replied Eose.

The words no sooner escaped her lips, than Mr. Grimwig, who had
been affecting to dip into a large book that lay on the table, upset it
with a great crash, and falling back in his chair, discharged from his
featui'os every expression but one of unmitigated wonder, and indulged
in a prolonged and vacant stare ; then, as if ashamed of having betrayed
so much emotion, he jerked himself, as it were, by a convulsion into
his former attitude, and looking out straight before him emitted a long
deep whistle, which seemed, at last, not to be discharged on empty air,
but to die away in the innermost recesses of his stomach.

254 Oliver Twist.

Mr. Brownlow was no less surprised, although his astonishment was
not expressed in the same eccentric manner. He drew his chair
nearer to Miss Maylie's, and said,

•' Do me the favour, my dear young lady, to leave entirely out of
the question that goodness and benevolence of which you speak, and
of which nobody else knows anything ; and if you have it in your power
to produce any evidence which will alter the unfavourable opinion I
was once induced to entertain of that poor child, in Heaven's name
put me in possession of it."

" A bad one ! I'll eat my head if ho is not a bad one," growled
Mr. Grimwig, speaking by some ventriloquial power, without moving
a muscle of his face.

"He is a child of a noble nature and a warm heart," said Rose,
colouring ; " and that Power which has thought fit to try him beyond
his years, has planted in his breast affections and feelings which
would do honour to many who have numbered his days six times
over."

" I'm only sixty-one," said Mr. Grimwig, with the same rigid face.
" And, as the devil's in it if this Oliver is not twelve years old at least,
I don't see the application of that remark."

" Do not heed my friend, Miss Maylie," said Mr. Brownlow ; " ho
does not mean what he says."

" Yes, he does," growled Mr. Grimwig.

" No, he does not," said Mr. Brownlow, obviously rising in wrath as
he spoke.

" He'll eat his head, if he doesn't," growled Mr. Grimwig.

" He would deserve to have it knocked off, if he does," said Mr.
Brownlow.

" And he'd uncommonly like to see any man oflfer to do it," re-
sponded Mr. Grimwig, knocking his stick upon the floor.

Having gone thus far, the two old gentlemen severally took snuftj
and afterwards shook hands, according to their invariable custom.

" Now, Miss Maylie," said Mr. Brownlow, " to return to the subject
in which your humanity is so much interested. Will you let me know
what intelligence you have of this poor child: allowing me to
premise that I exhausted every means in my power of discovering
him, and that since I have been absent from this country, my first
impression that he had imposed upon me, and had been persuaded by
his former associates to rob me, has been considerably shaken."

Rose, who had had time to collect her thoughts, at once related, in
a few natural words, all that had befallen Oliver since he left Mr.
Brownlow's house ; reserving Nancy's information for that gentleman's
private ear, and concluding with the assurance that his only sorrow,
for some months past, had been the not being able to meet with his
former benefactor and friend.

" Thank God ! " said the old gentleman. " This is great happiness
to me, great happiness. But yon have not told me where he is now

General Happiness. 255

Miss Maylie. You must pardon my finding fault with you, — but why
not have brought him ? "

*' He is waiting in a coach at the door," replied Rose.

" At this door ! " cried the old gentleman. With which he hurried
out of the room, down the stairs, up the coach-steps, and into the
coach, without another word.

When the room-door closed behind him, Mr. Grimwig lifted up his
head, and converting one of the hind legs of his chair into a pivot,
described three distinct circles with the assistance of his stick and the
table ; sitting in it all the time. After performing this evolution, he
rose and limped as fast as he could up and down the room at least
a dozen times, and then stopping suddenly before Rose, kissed her
without the slightest preface.

" Hush ! " he said, as the young lady rose in some alarm at this
unusual proceeding. " Don't be afraid. I'm old enough to be your
grandfather. You're a sweet girl. I like you. Here they are ! "

In fact, as he threw himself at one dexterous dive into his former
scat, Mr. Brownlow returned, accompanied by Oliver, whom Mr.
Grimwig received very graciously ; and if the gratification of that
moment had been the only reward for all her anxiety and care in
Oliver's behalf, Rose Maylie would have been well repaid.

" There is somebody else who should not be forgotten, by the bye,"
said Mr. Brownlow, ringing the bell. " Send Mrs. Bedwin here, if
you please."

The old housekeeper answered the summons with all dispatch ; and
dropping a curtsey at the door, waited for orders.

" Why, you get blinder every day, Bedwin," said Mr. Brownlow,
rather testily.

" Well, that I do, sir," replied the old lady. " People's eyes, at my
time of life, don't improve with age, sir."

" I could have told you that," rejoined Mr. Brownlow ; " but put
on your glasses, and see if you can't find out what you were wanted
for, will you ? "

The old lady began to rummage in her pocket for her spectacles.
But Oliver's patience was not proof against this new trial ; and yield-
ing to his first impulse, he sprang into her arms.

" God be good to me ! " cried the old lady, embracing him ; " it is
my innocent boy ! "

" My dear old nurse ! " cried Oliver.

" He would come back — I knew he would," said the old lady,
holding him in her arms. "How well he looks, and how like a
gentleman's son he is dressed again! Where have you been, this
long, long while ? Ah ! the same sweet face, but not so pale ; the
same soft eye, but not so sad. I have never forgotten them or his
quiet smile, but have seen them every day, side by side with those of
my own dear children, dead and gone since I was a lightsome young
creature." Running on thus, and now holding Oliver from her to

256 Oliver Twist.

mark how he had gro^vn, now clasping him to her and passing her
fingers fondly through his hair, the good soul laughed and wept upon
his neck by turns.

Leaving her and Oliver to compare notes at leisure, Mr. Brownlow
led the way into another room ; and there, heard from Rose a full
narration of her interview with Nancy, which occasioned him no little
surprise and perplexity. Rose also explained her reasons for not con-
fiding in her friend Mr. Losberne in the first instance. The old
gentleman considered that she had acted prudently, and readily under-
took to hold solemn conference with the worthy doctor himself. To
afford him an early opportunity for the execution of this design, it was
arranged that he should call at the hotel at eight o'clock that evening,
and that in the meantime Mrs. Maylie should be cautiously informed
of all that had occurred. These preliminaries adjusted. Rose and
Oliver returned home.

Rose had by no means overrated the measure of the good doctor's
wrath. Nancy's history was no sooner unfolded to him, than he
poured forth a shower of mingled threats and execrations ; threatened
to make her the first victim of the combined ingenuity of Messrs.
Blathers and Duff ; and actually put on his hat preparatory to sallying
forth to obtain the assistance of those worthies. And, doubtless, he
would, in this first outbreak, have carried the intention into effect
without a moment's consideration of the consequences, if he had not
been restrained, in part, by corresponding violence on the side of Mr.
Brownlow, who was himself of an irascible temperament, and partly
by such arguments and representations as seemed best calculated to
dissuade him from his hotbrained purpose.

" Then what the devil is to be done ? " said the impetuous doctor,
when they had rejoined the two ladies. " Are we to pass a vote of
thanks to all these vagabonds, male and female, and beg them to
accept a hundred pounds, or so, apiece, as a trifling mark of our
esteem, and some slight acknowledgment of their kindness to
Oliver?"

" Not exactly that," rejoined Mr. Brownlow, laughing ; " but we
must proceed gently and with great care."

"Gentleness and care," exclaimed the doctor. "I'd send them one
and all to "

"Never mind where," interposed Mr. Brownlow. "But reflect
whether sending them anywhere is likely to attain the object we have
in view."

" What object ? " asked the doctor.

" Simply, the discovery of Oliver's parentage, and regaining for
him the inheritance of which, if this story be true, he has been
fraudulently deprived."

" Ah ! " said Mr. Losberne, cooling himself with his pocket-hand-
kerchief ; " I almost forgot that."

" You see," pursued Mr. Brownlow ; " placing this poor girl

Mr. Br own low's Head for thinking. 257

entirely out of the question, and supposing it were possible to bring
these scoundrels to justice without compromising her safety, what
good should we bring about ? "

" Hanging a few of them at least, in all probability," suggested the
doctor, " and transporting the rest."

" Very good," replied Mr. Brownlow, smiling ; " but no doubt they
will bring that about for themselves in the fulness of time, and if wo
step in to forestal them, it seems to mo that we shall be performing a
very Quixotic act, in direct opposition to our own interest — or at least
to Oliver's, whicli is the same thing."

" How ? " inquired the doctor.

" Thus. It is quite clear that we shall have extreme difficulty in
getting to the bottom of this mystery, unless we can bring this man,
Monks, upon his knees. That can only be done by stratagem, and by
catching him when he is not surrounded by these people. For,
suppose he were apprehended, we have no proof against him. He is
not even (so far as we know, or as the facts appear to us) concerned
with the gang in any of their robberies. If he were not discharged,
it is very unlikely that he could receive any further punishment than
being committed to prison as a rogue and vagabond ; and of course
ever afterwards his mouth would be so obstinately closed that he
might as well, for our purposes, be deaf, dumb, blind, and an idiot."

" Then," said the doctor impetuously, " I put it to you again,
whether you think it reasonable that this promise to the girl should
be considered binding ; a promise made with the best and kindest
intentions, but really "

" Do not discuss the point, my dear young lady, pray," said Mr.
Brownlow, interrupting Eoso as she was about to speak. "The
promise shall be kept. I don't think it will, in the slightest degree,
interfere with our proceedings. But, before we can resolve upon
any precise course of action, it will be necessary to see the girl ; to
ascertain from her whether she will point out this Monks, on the
understanding that he is to be dealt with by us, and not by the law ;
or, if she will not, or cannot do that, to procure from her such an
account of his haunts and description of his person, as will enable us
to identify him. She cannot be seen until next Sunday night ; this
is Tuesday. I would suggest that in the meantime, we remain per-
fectly quiet, and keep these matters secret even from Oliver himself."

Although Mr. Losberne received with many wry faces a proposal
involving a delay of five whole days, he was fain to admit that no
better course occurred to him just then ; and as both Kose and Mrs.
Maylie sided very strongly with Mr. Brownlow, that gentleman's
proposition was carried unanimously.

" I should like," he said, " to call in the aid of my friend Grimwig.
He is a strange creature, but a shrewd one, and might prove of
material assistance to us ; I should say that he was bred a lawyer, and
quitted the Bar in disgust because he had only one brief and a motion

S

258 Oliver Tivist.

of conrse, in twenty years, though whether that is a recommendation
or not, you must determine for yourselves."

" I have no objection to your calling in your friend if I may call in
mine," said the doctor.

" Wo must put it to the vote," replied Mr. Brownlow, " who may
he be ? "

" That lady's son, and this young lady's — very old friend," said the
doctor, motioning towards Mrs. Maylie, and concluding with an expres-
sive glance at her niece.

Eose blushed deeply, but she did not make any audible objection
to this motion (pogsibly she felt in a hojieless minority) ; and Harry
Maylie and Mr. Grimwig were accordingly added to the committee.

" We stay in town, of course," said Mrs. Maylie, " while there
remains the slightest prospect of prosecuting this inquiry with a chauco
of success. I will spare neither trouble nor expense in behalf of tho
object in which we are all so deeply interested, and I am content to
remain here, if it be for twelve months, so long as you assure me that
any hope remains."

" Good ! " rejoined Mr. Brownlow. " And as I sec on tho faces
about me, a disposition to inquire how it happened that I was not in
the way to corroborate Oliver's tale, and had so suddenly left the
kingdom, let me stipulate that I shall be asked no questions until such
time as I may deem it expedient to forestal them by telling my own
story. Believe me, I make this request with good reason, for I might
otherwise excite hopes destined never to be realised, and only increase
dificulties and disappointments already quite numerous enough.
Come ! Supper has been announced, and young Oliver, who is all
alone in the next room, will have begun to think, by this time, that
we have wearied of bis company, and entered into some dark conspiracy
to thrust him forth upon the world."

With these words, the old gentleman gave his hand to Mrs. Maylie,
and escorted her into the supper-room. Mr. Losberne followed, lead-
ing Rose ; and the council was, for the present, effectually broken up.

CHAPTER XLII.

hS OLD ACQUAINTANCE OF OLIVEK's, EXHIBITING DECIDED MAUKS OF GENIUS,
BECOMES A PUBLIC CHARACTER IN THE METROPOLIS.

Upon the night when Nancy, having lulled Mr. Sikes to sleep, hurried
on her self-imposed mission to Rose Maylie, there advanced towards
London, by the Great North Road, two persons, upon whom it is
expedient that this history should bestow some attention.

They were a man and woman ; or perhaps they would be better

\ Mr. Claypole and Lady. 259

described as a male and female : for the foiroer was one of those long-
limbed, knock-kneed, shambling, bony people, to whom it is difficult
to assign any precise age, — looking as they do, when they are yet
boys, like undergrown men, and when they are almost men, like over-
grown boys. The woman was young, but of a robust and hardy make,
as she need have been to bear the weight of the heavy bundle which
was strapped to her back. Her companion was not encumbered with
much luggage, as there merely dangled from a stick which he carried
over his shoulder, a small parcel wrapped in a common handkerchief,
and apparently light enough. This circumstance, added to the length
of his legs, which were of unusual extent, enabled him with much
ease to keep some half-dozen paces in advance of his companion, to
whom he occasionally turned with an impatient jerk of the head : as
if reproaching her tardiness, and urging her to greater exertion.

Thus, they had toiled along the dusty road, taking little heed of
any object within sight, save when they stepped aside to allow a wider
passage for the mail-coaches which were whirling out of town, until
they passed through Highgate archway ; when the foremost traveller
stopped and called impatiently to his companion,

" Come on, can't yer ? What a lazybones yer are, Charlotte."

" It's a heavy load, I can tell you," said the female, coming np,
almost breathless with fatigue.

" Heavy ! What are yer talking about ? What are yer made for ? "
rejoined the male traveller, changing his own little bundle as ho
sjioke, to the other shoulder. " Oh, there yer are, resting again !
Well, if yer ain't enough to tire anybody's patience out, I don't know
what is ! "

" Is it much farther ? " asked the woman, resting herself against a
bank, and looking up with the perspiration streaming from her face.

"Much farther! Yer as good as there," said the long-legged
tramper pointing out before him. " Look there ! Those are the
lights of London."

" They're a good two mile off, at least," said the woman despondingly.

" Never mind whether they're two mile off, or twenty," said Noah
Claypole ; for he it was ; " but get up and come on, or I'll kick yer,
and so I give yer notice."

As Noah's red nose grew redder with anger, and as he crossed the
road while speaking, as if fully prepared to put his threat into
execution, the woman rose without any farther remark, and trudged
onward by his side.

"Where do you mean to stop for the night, Noah?" she asked,
after they had walked a few hundred yards.

"How should I know?" replied Noah, whose temper had been
considerably impaired by walking.

" Near, I hope," said Charlotte.

"No, not near," replied Mr. Claypole. "There! Not near; so
don't think it,"

26o Oliver Twist

♦'Why not?"

" When I tell yer that I don't mean to do a thing, that's enough,
without any why or because either," replied Mr. Claypole Avith
dignity.

" Well, you needn't be so cross," said his companion.

" A pretty thing it would be, wouldn't it, to go and stop at the
very first public-house outside the town, so that Sowerberry, if he
come up after us, might poke in his old nose, and have us taken back
in a cart with handcuffs on," said Mr. Claypole in a jeering tone.
" No ! I shall go and lose myself among the narrowest streets I can
find, and not stop till we come to the very out-of-the-way est house I
can set eyes on. 'Cod, yer may thank yer stars I've got a head ; for
if we hadn't gone, at first, the wrong road a piirpose, and come back
across country, yer'd have been locked up hard and fast a week ago,
my lady. And serve yer right for being a fool."

" I know I ain't as cunning as you are," replied Charlotte ; " but
don't put all the blame on me, and say I should have been locked up.
You would have been if I had been, any way."

" Yer took the money from the till, yer know yer did," said Mr,
Claypole.

" I took it for you, Noah, dear," rejoined Charlotte.

" Did I keep it ? " asked Mr. Claypole.

" No ; you trusted in me, and let mo carry it like a dear, and so
you are," said the lady, chucking him under the chin, and drawing
her arm through his.

This was indeed the case ; but as it was not Mr. Claypole's habit to
repose a blind and foolish confidence in anybody, it should be observed,
in justice to that gentleman, that he had trusted Charlotte to this
extent, in order that, if they were pursued, the money might be found
on her : which would leave him an opportunity of asserting his
innocence of any theft, and would greatly facilitate his chances of
escape. Of course, he entered at this juncture, into no explanation of
his motives, and they walked on very lovingly together.

In pursuance of this cautious plan, Mr. Claypole went on, without
lialting, until he arrived at the Angel at Islington, where he wisely
judged, from the crowd of passengers and number of vehicles, that
London began in earnest. Just pausing to observe which appeared
the most crowded streets, and consequently the most to be avoided, he
crossed into Saint John's Road, and was soon deep in the obscurity of
the intricate and dirty ways, which, lying between Gray's Inn Lane
and Smithfield, render that part of the town one of the lowest and
worst that improvement has left in the midst of London.

Through these streets, Noah Claypole walked, dragging Charlotte
after him ; now stepping into the kennel to embrace at a glance the
whole external character of some small public-house ; now jogging on
again, as some fancied appearance induced him to believe it too
public for his purpose. At length, he stopped in front of one, mor^

tn the Tap of the Thfec Cripples. 56 f

Lnmble in appearance and more dirty than any he had yet seen ; and,
having crossed over and surveyed it from the opposite pavement,
graciously announced his intention of putting up there, for the night.

"So give us the bundle," said Noah, unsirapping it from the
woman's shoulders, and slinging it over his own; "and don't yor
speak, except when yer spoke to. What's the name of the house — •
t-h-r — three what ? "

" Cripples," said Charlotte.

" Three Cripples," repeated Noah, " and a very good sign too.
Now, then ! Keep close at my heels, and come along." With these
injunctions, he pushed the rattling door with his shoulder, and entered
the house, followed by his companion.

There was nobody in the bar but a young Jew, who, \\dth his two
elbows on the counter, was reading a dirty newspaper. He stared
very hard at Noah, and Noah stared very hard at him.

U Noah had been attired in his charity-boy's dress, there might
have been some reason for the Jew opening his eyes so wide ; but as
he had discarded the coat and badge, and wore a short smock-frock
over his leathers, there seemed no particular reason for his appearance
exciting so much attention in a public-house.

"Is this the Thi-ee Cripples?" asked Noah.

" That is the dabe of this ouse," replied the Jew.

" A gentleman we met on the road, coming up from the country,
recommended us here," said Noah, nudging Chai-lotte, perhaps to call
her attention to this most ingenious device for attracting respect, and
perhaps to warn her to betray no surprise. " We want to sleep here
to-night."

" I'b dot certaid you cad," said Barney, who was the attendant
sprite ; " but I'll idquire."

" Show us the tap, and give us a bit of cold meat and a drop of
beer while yer inquiring, will yer ? " said Noah.

Barney complied by ushering them into a small back-room, and
setting the reqmred viands before them ; having done which, he
informed the travellers that they could be lodged that night, and left
the amiable couple to their refreshment.

Now, this back-room was immediately behind the bar, and some
steps lower, so that any person connected with the house, undrawing
a small curtain which concealed a single pane of glass fixed in the
wall of the last-named apartment, about five feet from its flooring,
could not only look down upon any guests in the back-room without
any great hazard of being observed (the glass being in a dark angle
of the wall, between which and a lai'ge upright beam the observer
had to thrust himself), but could, by applying his ear to the partition,
ascertain with tolerable distinctness, their subject of conversation.
The landlord of the house had not withdrawn his eye from this place
of espial for five minutes, and Barney had only just returned from
making the communication above related, when Fagin, in the course

262 Oliver Tivisf. '

of his evening's business, came into the bar to inquire after some of
his young pupUs.

" Hush ! " said Barney : " stradegers id the next roob."

" Strangers ! " repeated the old man in a whisper.

" Ah I Ad rub uds too," added Barney. " Frob the cuttry, but
subthig in youi* way, or I'b bistaked."

Fagin appeared to receive this communication with great interest.
Mounting a stool, he cautiously applied his eye to the pane of glass,
from which secret post he could see Mr. Claypole taking cold beef
from the dish, and porter from the pot, and administering homoeopathic
doses of both to C'harlotte, who sat jjatiently by, eating and drinking
at his pleasure.

" Aha ! " he whispered, looking round to Barney, " I like that
fellow's looks. He'd be of use to us ; ho knows how to train the girl
already. Don't make as much noise as a mouse, my dear, and let me
hear 'em talk — let me hear 'em."

He again applied his eye to the glass, and turning his ear to the
partition, listened attentively : with a subtle and eager look upon his
face, that might have appertained to some old goblin.

" So I mean to be a gentleman," said Mr. Claypole, kicking out his
legs, and continuing a conversation, the commencement of which
Fagin had arrived too late to hear. "No more jolly old coffins,
Charlotte, but a gentleman's life for me : and, if yer like, yer shall be
a lady."

" I should like that well enough, dear," replied Charlotte ; " but
tills ain't to be emptied every day, and people to get clear off after it."

" Tills be blowed ! " said Mr. Claypole ; " there's more things
besides tills to be emptied."

" What do you mean ? " asked his companion.

" Pockets, women's ridicules, houses, mail-coaches, banks ! " said
Mr. Claypole, rising with the porter.

" But you can't do all that, dear," said Charlotte.

" I shall look out to get into company with them as can," replied
Noah. "They'll be able to make us useful some way or another.
Why, you yourself are worth fifty women ; I never see such a precious
sly and deceitful creetur as yor can be when I let yer."

" Lor, how nice it is to hear yer say so I " exclaimed Charlotte,
imprinting a kiss upon his ugly face.

" There, that'll do : don't yer be too affectionate, in case I'm cross
with yer," said Noah, disengaging himself with great gravity. "I
ehould like to be the captain of some band, and have the whopping of
'em, and foUering 'em about, unbeknown to themselves. That would
suit me, if there was good profit ; and if we could only get in with
some gentlemen of this sort, I say it "vould be cheap at that twenty-
pound note you've got, — especially as we don't very well know how
to get rid of it ourselves."

After expressing this opinion, Mr. Claypole looked into the porter-

/r/'e'/^ynr>^^,yMrp'y^^ Sy^/^/i^

Fagin introduces Jdmself to Mr. Claypole. 263

pot with an aspect of deep wisdom ; and having well shaken its
contents, nodded condescendingly to Charlotte, and took a dranght,
wherewith he appeared greatly refreshed. He was meditating another,
when the sudden opening of the door, and the appeaitince of a stranger,
interrupted him.

The stranger was Mr. Fagin. And very amiable he looked, and
a very low bow he made, as he advanced, and setting himself down
at the nearest table, ordered something to drink of the grinning
Barney.

" A pleasant night, sir, but cool for the time of year," said Fagin,
rubbing his hands. " From the country, I see, sir ? "
" How do yor see that ? " asked Noah Claypole.
" We have not so much dust as that in London," replied Fagin,
pointing from Noah's shoes to those of his companion, and from them
to the two bundles.

" Yer a sharp feller," said Noah. " Ha ! ha ! only hear that,
Charlotte!"

" Why, one need be sharp in this town, my dear," replied the Jew,
sinking his voice to a confidential whisper ; " and that's the truth."

Fagin followed up this remark by striking the side of his noso
with his right forefinger, — a gesture which Noah attempted to imitate,
though not with complete success, in consequence of his own nose not
being largo enough for the purpose. However, Mr. Fagin seemed to
interpret the endeavour as expressing a perfect coincidence with his
opinion, and put about the liquor which Barney re-appeared with, in
a very friendly manner.

" Good stuff that," observed Mr. Claypole, smacking his lips.
" Dear ! " said Fagin. " A man need be always emptying a till, or
a pocket, or a woman's reticule, or a house, or a mail-coach, or a
bank, if he drinks it regularly."

Mr. Claypole no sooner heard this extract from his own remarks
than he fell back in his chair, and looked from the Jew to Charlotte
with a countenance of ashy paleness and excessive terror.

" Don't mind me, my dear," said Fagin, drawing his chair closer.
" Ha ! ha ! it was lucky it was only me that heard you by chance. It
was very lucky it was only me."

" I didn't take it," stammered Noah, no longer stretching out his
legs like an independent gentleman, but coiling them up as well as
he could under his chair ; " it was all her doing : yer've got it now,
Charlotte, yer know yer have."

" No matter who's got it, or who did it, my dear," replied Fagin,
glancing, nevertheless, with a hawk's eye at the girl and the two
bundles. " I'm in that way myself, and I like you for it."
" In what way ? " asked Mr. Claypole, a little recovering.
" In that way of business," rejoined Fagin ; " and so are the people
of the house. You've hit the right nail upon the head, and are as safe
here as you could be. There is not a safer place in all this town than

264 Oliver Twist.

is the Cripples ; that is, when I like to make it so. And I have taken
a fancy to you and the young woman ; so I've said the word, and you
may make your minds easy."

Noah Claypole's mind might have been at ease after this assurance,
hut his body certainly was not ; for he shuiHed and writhed about, into
various uncouth positions: eyeing his new friend meanwhile with
mingled fear and suspicion.

"I'll tell you more," said Fagin, after he had reassured the girl, by
dint of friendly nods and muttered encouragements. " I have got a
friend that I think can gratify your darling wish, and put you in the
right way, where you can take whatever department of the business
you think will suit you best at first, and be taught all the others."

" Yer speak as if yer were in earnest," replied Noah.

" What advantage would it be to me to be anything else ? " inquired
Fagin, shrugging his shoulders. " Here ! Lot me have a word with
you outside."

"There's no occasion to trouble ourselves to move," said Noah,
getting his legs by gradual degrees abroad again. " She'll take the
luggage up-stairs the while. Charlotte, see to them bundles ! "

This mandate, which had been delivered with great majesty, was
obeyed without the slightest demur ; and Charlotte made the best of
her way off with the packages while Noah held the door open and
watched her out.

" She's kept tolerably well under, ain't she ? " he asked as he
resumed his seat : in the tone of a keeper who has tamed some wild
animal.

" Quite perfect," rejoined Fagin, clapping him on the shoulder.
" You're a genius, my dear."

" Why, I suppose if I wasn't, I shouldn't be here," replied Noah".
" But, I say, she'll be back if yer lose time."

" Now, what do you think ? " said Fagin. " If yon was to like my
friend, could you do better than join him ? "

" Is he in a good way of business ; that's where it is ! " responded
Noah, winking one of his little eyes.

" The top of the tree ; employs a power of hands ; has the very best
society in the profession."

" Regular town-maders ? " asked Mr. Claypole.

" Not a countryman among 'em ; and I don't think he'd take you,
even on my recommendation, if he didn't run rather short of assistants
just now," replied Fagin.

" Should I have to hand over ? " said Noah, slapping his breeches-
pocket.

" It couldn't possibly be done without,"' replied Fagin, in a most
decided manner.

" Twenty pound, though — it's a lot of money ! "

*' Not when it's in a note you can't get rid of," retorted Fagin.
* Number and date taken, I suppose ? Payment stopped at the Bank ?

An Opining presents itself. 265

All ! It's not worth much to him. It'll have to go abroad, and he
couldn't sell it for a great deal in the market."

" When could I see him ? " asked Noah doubtfully.

" To-moiTow morning."

"Where?"

"Here."

« Um ! " said Noah. " What's the wages ? "

"Live like a gentleman — board and lodging, pipes and spirits free
— half of all you earn, and half of all the young woman earns," replied
Mr. Fagin.

Whether Noah Claypole, whose rapacity was none of the least
comprehensive, would have acceded even to these glowing terms, had
he been a perfectly free agent, is very doubtful ; but as he recollected
that, in the event of his refusal, it was in the power of his new
acquaintance to give him up to justice immediately (and more unlikely
things had come to pass), ho gradually relented, and said he thought
that would suit him.

" But, yer see," observed Noah, " as she will be able to do a good
deal, I should like to take something very light."

" A little fancy work ? " suggested Fagin.

" Ah ! something of that sort," replied Noah. " What do you think
would suit me now ? Something not too trying for the strength, and
not very dangerous, you know. That's the sort of thing ! "

" I heard you talk of something in the spy way upon the others, my
dear," said Fagin. " My fnend wants somebody who would do that
well, very much."

" Why, I did mention that, and I shouldn't mind turning my hand
to it sometimes," rejoined Mr. Claypole slowly ; " but it wouldn't pay
by itself, you Imow."

" That's true ! " observed the Jew, ruminating or pretending to
ruminate. " No, it might not."

" What do you think, then ? " asked Noah, anxiously regarding him.
•' Something in the sneaking way, where it was pretty sure work, aud
not much more risk than being at home."

" What do you think of the old ladies ? " asked Fagin. " There's
a good deal of money made in snatching their bags and parcels, and
running round the corner."

" Don't they holler out a good deal, and scratch sometimes ? " asked
Noah, shaking his head. " I don't think that would answer my
purpose. Ain't there any other line open ? "

" Stop ! " said Fagin, laying his hand on Noah's knee. " The
kinchin lay."

" What's that ? " demanded Mr. Claypole.

" The kinchins, my dear," said Fagin, " is the young children that's
sent on errands by their mothers, with sixpences and shillings ; and
the lay is just to take their money away — they've always got it ready
in their hands, — then knock 'em into the kennel, and walk off very

266 Oliver Twist.

Blow, as if there were nothing else the matter but a child fallen down
and hurt itself. Ha ! ha ! ha ! "

" Ha ! ha ! " roared Mr. Claypole, kicking up his legs in an ecstasy.
*' Lord, that's the very thing ! "

" To bo sure it is," replied Fagin ; " and you can have a few good
beats chalked out in Camden Town, and Battle Bridge, and neighbour-
hoods like that, where they're always going errands; and you can
upset as many kinchins as you want, any hour in the day. Ha!
ha! ha!"

AVith this, Fagin poked Mr. Claypole in the side, and they joined
in a burst of laughter both long and loud.

" Well, that's all right ! " said Noah, when he had recovered him-
self, and Charlotte had returned. " What time to-morrow shall we
Bay?"

" Will ten do ? " asked Fagin, adding, as Mr. Claypole nodded
assent, " What name shall I tell my good friend ? "

" Mr. Bolter," replied Noah, who had prepared himself for such an
emergency. " Mr. Morris Bolter. This is Mrs. Bolter."

" Mrs. Bolter's humble servant," said Fagin, bowing with grotesque
politeness. " I hope I shall know her better very shortly."

" Do you hear the gentleman, Charlotte ? " thundered Mr. Claypole.

" Yes, Noah, dear ! " replied Mrs. Bolter, extending her hand.

" She calls me Noah, as a sort of fond way of talking," said Mr.
Morris Bolter, late Claypole, turning to Fagin. " You understand ? "

" Oh yes, I understand — perfectly," replied Fagin, telling the truth
for once. " Good-night ! Good-night ! "

With many adieus and good wishes, Mr. Fagin went his way. Noah
Claypole, bespeaking his good lady's attention, proceeded to enlighten
her relative to the arrangement he had made, with all that haughtiness
and air of superiority, becoming, not only a member of the sterner sex,
but a gentleman who appreciated the dignity of a special appointment
on the kinchin lay, in London and its vicinity.

CHAPTER XLIIL

WHnREIN 18 SHOWN HOW THE ARTFUL DODGKE GOT INTO TKOtTBLE.

" And SO it was yon that was your own friend, was it ? " asked Mr.
Claypole, otherwise Bolter, when, by virtue of the compact entered
into between them, he had removed next day to Fagin's house. " 'Cod,
I thought as much last night ! "

" Every man's his own friend, my dear," replied Fagin, witli his
most insinuating grin. "He hasn't as good a one as himself any-
where."

Mr. Bolter and Friend. 267

" Except sometimeB," replied Morris Bolter, assuming tlie air of a
man of the world. " Some people are nobody's enemies but their own,
yer know."

" Don't believe that," said Fagin. " When a man's his own enemy,
it's only because he's too much his own friend; not because he's
careful for everybody but himself. Pooh ! pooh ! There ain't such a
thing in nature."

" There oughtn't to be, if there is," replied Mr. Bolter.

" That stands to reason. Some conjurei-s say that number three is
the magic number, and some say number seven. It's neither, my
fiiend, neither. It's number one."

" Ha ! ha ! " cried Mr. Bolter. " Number one for ever."

" In a little community like ours, my dear," said Fagin, who felt it
necessary to qualify this position, " we have a general number one ;
that is, you can't consider yourself as number one, without considering
me too as the same, and all the other young people."

" Oh, the devU ! " exclaimed Mr. Bolter.

" You see," pursued Fagin, affecting to disregard this interruption,
" wo are so mixed up together, and identified in our interests, that it
must be so. For instance, it's yom* object to take care of number one
— meaning yourself."

" Certainly," replied Mr. Bolter. " Yer about right there."

" Well ! You can't take care of yourself, number one, without
taking care of me, number one."

" Number two, you mean," said Mr. Bolter, who was lai'gely endowed
with the quality of selfishness.

" No, I don't ! " retorted Fagin. " I'm of the same importance to
you, as you are to yourself.'-'

" I say," interrupted Mr. Bolter, " yer a very nice man, and I'm very
fond of yer ; but we ain't quite so thick together, as all that comes to."

" Only think," said Fagin, shrugging his shoulders, and stretching
out his hands; "only consider. You've done what's a very pretty
thing, and what I love you for doing; but what at the same time
would put the cravat round your throat, that's so very easily tied and
so very difficult to unloose — in plain English, the halter ! "

Mr. Bolter put his hand to his neckerchief, as if he felt it incon-
veniently tight ; and munnured an assent, qualified in tone but not in
substance.

" The gallows," continued Fagin, " the gallows, my dear, is an ugly
finger-post, which points out a very short and sharp turning that has
st^opped many a bold fellow's career on the broad highway. To keep
in the easy road, and keep it at a distance, is object number one with
you."

" Of course it is," replied Mr. Bolter. " What do yer talk about
such things for ? "

" Only to show you my meaning clearly," said the Jew, raising his
eyebrows. " To be able to do that, you depend upon me. To keep

268 Oliver Twist.

my little business all snug, I depend upon you. The fii*st is yonr
number one, the second my number one. The more you value your
number one, the more careful you must bo of mine ; so we come at
last to what I told you at first — that a regard for number one holds
us all together, and must do so, unless we would all go to pieces in
company."

"That's true," rejoined Mr. Bolter, thoughtfully. "Oh! yer a
cunning old codger ! "

Mr. Fagin saw, with delight, that this tribute to his powers was no
mere compliment, but that he had really impressed his recruit with a
sense of his wily genius, which it was most important that he should
entertain in the outset of their acquaintance. To strengthen an
impression so desirable and useful, he followed up the blow by
acquainting him, in some detail, with the magnitude and extent of his
operations ; blending truth and fiction together, as best served his
purpose; and bringing both to bear, with so much art, that Mr.
Bolter's respect visibly increased, and became tempered, at the same
time, with a degree of wholesome fear, which it was highly desii-able
to awaken.

"It's this mutual trust we have in each other that consoles me
under heavy losses," said Fagin. " My best hand was taken from me,
yesterday morning."

" You don't mean to say he died ? " cried Mr. Bolter.

" No, no," replied Fagin, " not so bad as that. Not quite so bad."

" What, I suppose he was "

" Wanted," interposed Fagin. " Yes, he was wanted."

" Very particular ? " inquired Mr. Bolter.

" No," replied Fagin, " not very. He was charged with attempting
to pick a pocket, and they found a silver snufi'-box on him, — his own,
my dear, his own, for he took snuff himself, and was very fond of it.
They remanded him till to-day, for they thought they knew the owner.
Ah ! he was worth fifty boxes, and I'd give the price of as many to
have him back. You should have known the Dodger, my dear ; you
should have known the Dodger."

" Well, but I shall know him, I hope ; don't yer think so ? " said
Mr. Bolter.

" I'm doubtful about it," replied Fagin, with a sigh. " If they
don't get any fresh evidence, it'll only be a summary conviction, and
we shall have him back again after six weeks or so ; but, if they do,
it's a case of lagging. They know what a clever lad he is ; he'll be a
lifer. They'll make the Artful nothing less than a lifer."

"What do yer mean by lagging and a lifer?" demanded Mr.
Bolter. " What's the good of talking in that way to me ; why don't
yer speak so as I can understand yer ? "

Fagin was about to translate these mysterious expressions into the
vulgar tongue ; and, being interpreted, Mr. Bolter would have been
informed that they represented that combination of words, " transporta-

The Post of Honour is a Newgate Station. 269

tion for life," when the dialogue was cut short by the entry of Master
Bates, with his hands in his breeches-pockets, and his face twisted
into a look of semi-comical woe.

" It's all up, Fagin," said Charley, when he and his new companion
had been made known to each other.

" What do you mean ? "

"They've found the gentleman as owns the box; two or three
more's a coming to 'dentify him ; and tho Artful's booked for a
passage out," replied Master Bates. " I must have a full suit of
mourning, Fagin, and a hatband, to wisit him in, afore he sets out
upon his travels. To think of Jack Dawkins — lummy Jack — tho
Dodger — the Artful Dodger — going abroad for a common twopenny-
halfpenny sneeze-box ! I never thought he'd a done it under a gold
watch, chain, and seals, at the lowest. Oh, why didn't he rob some
rich old gentleman of all his walables, and go out as a gentleman,
and not like a common prig, without no honour nor glory ! "

With this expression of feeling for his unfortunate friend. Master
Bates sat himself on the nearest chair with an aspect of chagrin and
despondency.

" What do you talk about his having neither honour nor glory for ! "
exclaimed Fagin, darting an angry look at his pupil. " Wasn't ho
always top-sawyer among you all! Is there one of you that could
touch him or come near him on any scent ! Eh ? "

"Not one," replied Master Bates, in a voice rendered husky by
regret ; " not one."

"Then Avhat do you talk of?" replied Fagin angrily; "what are
you blubbering for ? "

" 'Cause it isn't on the rec-ord, is it ? " said Charley, chafed into
perfect defiance of his venerable friend by the current of his regrets ;
" 'cause it can't come out in the 'dictment ; 'cause nobody will never
know half of what he was. How will he stand in the Newgate
Calendar ? P'raps not be there at all. Oh, my eye, my eye, wot a
blow it is ! "

" Ha ! ha ! " cried Fagin extending his right hand, and turning to
Mr. Bolter in a fit of chuckling which shook him as though he had
the palsy,* "see what a pride they take in their profession, my dear.
Ain't it beautiful ? "

Mr. Bolter nodded assent ; and Fagin, after contemplating the grief
of Charley Bates for some seconds with evident satisfaction, stepped
up to that young gentleman and patted him on the shoulder.

" Never mind, Charley," said Fagin soothingly ; " it'll come out,
it'll be sure to come out. They'll all know what a clever fellow he
was ; he'll show it himself, and not disgrace his old pals and teachers.
Think how young he is too! What a distinction, Charley, to be
Jagged at his time of life ! "

" Well, it is a honour that is ! " said Charley, a little consoled.

•" He shall have all he wants," continued the Jew. " He shall be

270 Oliver Tivist.

kept ill the Stone Jug, Charley, like a gentleman. Like a gentleman !
"With his beer every day, and money in his pooket to pitch and toss
with, if he can't spend it."

" No, shall he though ? " cried Charley Bates.

"Ay, that he shall," replied Fagin, "and we'll have a big-wig,
Charley : one that's got the greatest gift of the gab : to carry on his
defence ; and he shall make a speech for himself too, if he likes ; and
we'll read it all in the papers — ' Artful Dodger — shrieks of laughter
— here the court was convulsed ' — eh, Charley, eh ? "

" Ha ! ha ! " laughed Master Bates, " what a lai'k that would be,
wouldn't it, Fagin ? I say, how the Artful would bother 'em, wouldn't
he?"

" Would ! " cried Fagin. " He shall— he will ! "

" Ah, to be sure, so he will," repeated Charley, rubbing his hands.

" I think I see him now," cried the Jew, bending his eyes upon his
pupil.

" So do I," cried Charley Bates. " Ha ! ha ! ha ! so do I. I see it
all afore me, upon my soul I do, Fagin. What a game ! What a
regular game ! All the big-wigs trying to look solemn, and Jack
Dawkins addressing of 'em as intimate and comfortable as if he was
the judge's own son making a speech arter dinner — ha ! ha ! ha ! "

In fact, Mr. Fagin had so well humoured his young friend's
eccentric disposition, that Master Bates, who had at first been dis-
posed to consider the imprisoned Dodger rather in the light of a
victim, now looked upon him as the chief actor in a scene of most
uncommon and exquisite humour, and felt quite impatient for the
arrival of the time when his old companion should have so favourable
an opportunity of displaying his abilities.

" We must know how he gets on to-day, by some handy means op
other," said Fagin. " Let me think."

" ShaU I go ? " asked Charley.

"Not for the world," replied Fagin. "Are you mad, my dear,
stark mad, that you'd walk into the very place where — No, Charley,
no. One is enough to lose at a time."

" You don't mean to go yourself, I suppose ? " said Charley with a
humorous leer.

" That wouldn't quite fit," replied Fagin shaking his head.

" Then why don't you send this new cove ? " asked Master Bates»
laying his hand on Noah's arm. " Nobody knows him."

" Why, if he didn't mind " observed Fagin.

" Mind ! " interposed Charley. " What should lie have to mind ? "

" Eeally nothing, my dear," said Fagin, turning to Mr. Bolter,
" really nothing."

"Oh, I dare say about that, yer know," observed Noah, backing
towards the door, and shaking his head with a kind of sober alarm.
" No, no — none of that. It's not in my department, that ain't ? "

"Wot department has he got, Fagin?" inquired Master Bates, sur-

Mr. Bolter disguised. 271

veying Noah's lank form with much disgust. "The cutting away
when there's anything wrong, and the eating all the wittlos when
there's everything right ; is that his branch ? "

" Never mind," retorted Mr. Bolter ; " and don't yer take liberties
with yer superiors, little boy, or yer'll find yerself in the wrong shop."

Master Bates laughed so vehemently at this magnificent threat,
that it was some time before Fagin could interpose, and represent to
Mr. Bolter that he incurred no possible danger in visiting the police-
office ; that, inasmuch as no account of the little affair in which he
had been engaged, nor any description of his person, had yet been
forwarded to the metropolis, it was very probable that he was not
even suspected of having resorted to it for shelter ; and that, if ho
were properly disguised, it would be as safe a spot for him to visit as
any in London, inasmuch as it would be, of all places, the very last,
to which he could be supposed likely to resort of his own free will.

Persuaded, in part, by these representations, but overborne in a
much greater degree by his fear of Fagin, Mr. Bolter at length con-
sented, with a very bad grace, to undertake the expedition. By
Fagin's directions, ho immediately substituted for his own attire, a
waggoner's frock, velveteen breeches, and leather leggings: all of
which articles the Jew had at hand. He was likewise furnished with
a felt hat well garnished with turnpike tickets ; and a carter's whip.
Thus equipped, he was to saunter into the office, as some country
fellow fi-om Covent Garden market might be supposed to do for the
gratification of his curiosity ; and as he was as awkward, ungainly,
and raw-boned a fellow as need be, Mr. Fagin had no fear but that
ho would look the part to perfection.

These arrangements completed, he was informed of the necessary
signs and tokens by which to recognise the Artful Dodger, and was
conveyed by Master Bates through dark and winding ways to within
a very sliort distance of Bow Street. Having described the precise
situation of the office, and accompanied it with copious directions how
he was to walk straight up the passage, and when ho got into the yard
take the door up the steps on the right-hand side, and pull oft" his hat
as he went into the room, Charley Bates bade him hurry on alone,
and promised to bide his return on the spot of their parting.

Noah Olaypole, or Morris Bolter as the reader pleases, punctually
followed the directions ha had received, which — Master Bates being
pretty well acquainted wi{h the locality — were so exact that he was
enabled to gain the magisterial presence without asking any question,
or meeting with any interniption by the way. He found himself
jostled among a crowd of people, chiefly women, who were huddled
together in a dirty frowsy room, at the upper end of which was a
raised platform raUed oft' from the rest, with a dock for the prisoners
on the left hand against the wall, a box for the witnesses in the
middle, and a desk for the magistrates on the right ; the awful locality
last named, being screened off by a partition which concealed the

2/2 Oliver Twist.

bencli from the common gaze, and left the vulgar to imagine (if they
could) the full majesty of justice.

There were only a couple of women in the dock, who were nodding
to their admiring friends, while the clerk read some depositions to a
couple of policemen and a man in plain clothes who leant over the
table. A jailer stood reclining against the dock-rail, tapping his nose
listlessly with a large key, except when he repressed an undue
tendeucy to conversation among the idlers, by proclaiming sUencc ;
or looked sternly up to bid some woman " Take that baby out," when
the gravity of justice was disturbed by feeble cries, half-smothered in
the mother's shawl, from some meagre infant. The room smelt close
and unwholesome ; the walls were dirt-discoloured ; and the ceiling
blackened. There was an old smoky bust over the mantel-shelf, and
a dusty clock above the dock — the only thing present, that seemed to
go on as it ought ; for depravity, or poverty, or an habitual acquaint-
ance with both, had left a taint on all the animate matter, hardly less
unpleasant than the thick greasy scum on every inanimate object that
frowned upon it.

Noah looked eagerly about him for the Dodger ; but although there
were several women who would have done very well for that dis-
tinguished character's mother or sister, and more than one man who
might be supposed to bear a strong resemblance to his father, nobody
at all answering the description given him of Mr. Dawkins was to be
seen. He waited in a state of much suspense and uncertainty until the
women, being committed for trial, went flaunting out ; and then was
quickly relieved by the appearance of another prisoner who he felt at
once could be no other than the object of his visit.

It was indeed Mr. Dawkins, who, shuflfling into the office ^vith the
big coat sleeves tucked up as usual, his left hand in his pocket, and
his hat in his right hand, 'preceded the jailer, with a rolling gait
altogether indescribable, and, taking his place in the dock, requested
in an audible voice to know what he was placed in that 'ere disgraceful
sitivation for.

" Hold your tongue, will you ? " said the jailer.

" I'm an Englishman, ain't I ? " rejoined the Dodger. " Where are
my priwileges ? "

" You'll get your privileges soon enough," retorted the jailer, " and
pepper with 'em."

" We'll see wot the Secretary of State for the Home Affairs has got
to say to the beaks, if I don't," replied Mr. Dawkins. " Now then !
Wot is this here business ? I shall thank the madg'strates to dispose
of this here little affair, and not to keep me while they read the paper,
for I've got an appointment with a genelman in the City, and as I am
a man of my word and wery punctual in business matters, he'll go
away if I ain't there to my time, and then pr'aps there won't be an
action for damage against them as kep me away. Oh no, certainly
not!"

The Artful before the Bench. 273

At this point, the Dodger, with a show of being very particular
with a view to proceedings to be had thereafter, desired the jailer to
communicate "the names of them two files as was on the bench."
Which so tickled the spectators, that they laughed almost as heartily
as Master Bates could have done if he had heard the request.

" Silence there ! " cried the jailer.

" What is this ? " inquired one of the magistrates.

" A pick-pocketing case, your worship."

" Has the boy ever been here before ? "

"He ought to have been, a many times," replied the jailer, "He
has been pietty well everywhere else. / know him well, your
worship."

" Oh ! you know me, do you ? " cried the Artfal, making a note of
the statement. "Wery good. That's a case of deformation of
character, any way."

Here there was another laugh, and another cry of silence.

" Now then, where are the witnesses ? " said the clerk.

" Ah ! that's right," added the Dodger. " Where are they ? I
should like to see 'em."

This wish was immediately gratified, for a policeman stepped
forward who had seen the prisoner attempt the pocket of an unkno^\Ti
gentleman in a crowd, and indeed take a handkerchief therefrom,
which, being a very old one, he deliberately put back again, after
trying it on his own countenance. For this reason, ho took the
Dodger into custody as soon as he could get near him, and the said
Dodger, being searched, had upon his person a silver snuff-box, with
the owner's name engraved upon the lid. This gentleman had been
discovered on reference to the Court Guide, and being then and there
present, swore that the snufi-box was his, and that he had missed it
on the previous day, the moment he had disengaged himself from the
crowd before referred to. He had also remarked a young gentleman
in the throng, particularly active in making his way about, and that
young gentleman was the prisoner before him.

" Have you anything to ask this witness, boy ? " said the magistrate.

" I wouldn't abase myself by descending to hold no conversation
with him," replied the Dodger.

" Have you anything to say at all ? "

" Do you hear his worship ask if you've anything to say ? " inquired
the jailer, nudging the silent Dodger with his elbow.

" I beg your pardon," said the Dodger, looking up with an air of
abstraction. " Did you redress yourself to me, my man ? "

" I never see such an out-and-out young wagabond, your worship,"
observed the officer with a grin. " Do you mean to say anything, you
young shaver ? "

" No," replied the Dodger, " not here, for this ain't the shop for
justice; besides which, my attorney is a-breakfasting this morning
with the Wice President of the House of Commons ; but I shall have

274 Oliver Tivist.

something to say elsewhere, and so will he, and so will a wery
numerous and 'spectable circle of acquaintance as'll make them beali
wish they'd never been born, or that they'd got their footmen to hang
'em up to their own hat-pegs, 'aforo they let 'em come out this morn-
ing to try it on upon me. I'll "

" There ! He's fully committed ! " interposed the clerk. " Take
him away."

" Come on," said the jailer.

" Oh ah ! I'll come on," replied the Dodger, brushing his hat with
the palm of his hand. " Ah ! (to the Bench) it's no use your looking
frightened ; I won't show you no mercy, not a ha'porth of it. YovUll
pay for this, my fine fellers. I wouldn't be you for something ! I
wouldn't go free, now, if you was to fall down on your knees and ask
me. Here, carry me off to prison ! Take me away ! "

With these last words, the Dodger suffered himself to be led off by
the collar ; threatening, till he got into the yard, to make a parlia-
mentary business of it ; and then grinning in the officer's face, with
great glee and self-approval.

Having seen him locked up by himself in a little cell, Noah made
the best of his way back to where he had left Master Bates. After
waiting here some time, he was joined by that young gentleman, who
had prudently abstained from showing himself until he had looked
carefully abroad from a snug reti'eat, and ascertained that his new
friend had not been followed by any impertinent person.

The two hastened back together, to bear to Mr. Fagin the animating
news that the Dodger was doing full justice to his bringing-up, and
establishing for himself a glorious reputation.

CHAPTER XLIV.

THS TIMB ARBtVES FOB NANCY TO BEDEEM HBB PLEDOE TO BOSE MATUE.

8HE FAILS.

Adept as she was, in all the arts of cunning and dissimulation, the
girl Nancy could not wholly conceal the effect which the knowledge
of the step she had taken, wrought upon her mind. She remembered
that both the crafty Jew and the brutal Sikes had confided to her
schemes, which had been hidden from all others : in the full con-
fidence that she was trustworthy and beyond the reach of their
suspicion. Vile as those schemes were, desperate as were their
originators, and bitter as were her feelings towards Fagin, who had
led her, step by step, deeper and deeper down into an abyss of crime
and misery, whence was no escape ; still, there were times when, even
towards him, she felt some relenting, lest her disclosure should bring

Mr. Sikes is himself again. 275

him witliin the iron grasp ho had so long cluiicd, and he should fall
at last — richly as he merited such a fate — by her hand.

But, these were the mere wanderings of a mind unable wholly to
detach itself from old companions and associations, though enabled to
fix itself steadily on one object, and resolved not to be turned aside
by any consideration. Her fears for Sikes would have been more
powerful inducements to recoil while there 'vas yet time ; but she had
stipulated that her secret should be rigidly kept, she had dropped no
clue which could lead to his discovery, she had refused, even for his
sake, a refuge from all the guilt and wretchedness that encompassed
her — and what more could she do ! She was resolved.

Though all her mental straggles terminated in this conclusion, they
forced themselves upon her, again and again, and left theii* traces too.
She grew pale and thin, even within a few days. At times, she took
no heed of what was passing before her, or no part in conversations
where once, she would have been the loudest. At other times, she
laughed without merriment, and was noisy without cause or meaning.
At others — often within a moment afterwards — she sat silent and
dejected, brooding with her head upon her hands, while the very eflfort
by which she roused herself, told, more forcibly than even these indi-
cations, that she was ill at ease, and that her thoughts were occupied
with matters very different and distant from those in course of dis-
cussion by her companions.

It was Sunday night, and the bell of the nearest church struck the
hour. Sikes and the Jew were talking, but they paused to listen.
The gii-1 looked up from the low seat on which she crouched, and
listened too. Eleven.

" An hour this side of midnight," said Sikes, raising the blind to
look out and returning to his seat. " Dark and heavy it is too. A
good night for business this."

" Ah ! " replied Fagin. " What a pity, Bill, my dear, that there's
none quite ready to be done."

" You're right for once," replied Sikes gruffly. " It is a pity, for
I'm in the humour too."

Fagin sighed, and shook his head despondingly.

" We must make up for lost time when we've got things into a good
train. That's all I know," said Sikes.

" That's the way to talk, my dear," replied Fagin, venturing to pat
him on the shoulder. " It does me good to hear yon."

" Does you good does it ! " cried Sikes. " Well, so be it."

" Ha ! ha ! ha ! " laughed Fagin, as if he were relieved by even this
concession. " You're like yourself to-night, Bill. Quite like your-
self."

" I don't feel like myself when you lay that withered old claw on
my shoulder, so take it away," said Sikes casting off the Jew's hand.

" It makes you nervous, Bill, — reminds you of being nabbed, does
it ? " said Fagin, determined not to be offended.

276 Oliver Tivist.

" Eemiads me of being nabbed by the devil," returned Sikes.
" There never was another man ^vith such a face as yours, unless it
was your father, and I suppose lie is singeing his grizzled red beard
by this time, unless you came straight from the old 'un without any
father at all betwixt you ; which I shouldn't wonder at, a bit."

Fagin offered no reply to this compliment : but, pulling Sikes by
the sleeve, pointed his finger towards Nancy, who had taken advantage
of the foregoing conversation to put on her bonnet, and was now
leaving the room.

" Hallo ! " cried Sikes. " Nance. Where's the gal going to at this
time of night? "

" Not far."

" What answer's that ? " returned Sikes. " Where are you going ? "

" I say, not far."

" And I say where ? " retorted Sikes. " Do you hear me ? "

" I don't know where," replied the girl.

"Then I do," said Sikes, more in the spirit of obstinacy than
because he had any real objection to the girl going where she listed.
" Nowhere. Sit down."

" I'm not well. I told you that before," rejoined the girl. " I
want a breath of air."

" Put your head out of the winder," replied Sikes.

" There's not enough there," said the girl. " I want it in the
street."

" Then you won't have it," replied Sikes. With which assurance
he rose, locked the door, took the key out, and pulling her bonnet
from her head, flung it up to the top of an old press. " There," said
the robber. " Now stop quietly where you are, will you ? "

" It's not such a matter as a bonnet would keep me," said the girl
turning very pale. " What do you mean, Bill ? Do you know what
you're doing ? "

" Know what I'm Oh ! " cried Sikes turning to Fagin, " she's

out of her senses, you know, or she daren't talk to me in that way."

"You'll drive me on to something desperate," muttered the girl
placing both hands upon her breast, as though to keep down by force
some violent outbreak. "Let me go, will you, — this minute — this
instant."

" No ! " said Sikes.

" Tell him to let me go, Fagin. He had better. It'll be better for
him. Do you hear me ? " cried Nancy stamping her foot upon the
ground.

" Hear you ! " repeated Sikes turning round in his chaii' to confront
her. " Aye ! And if I hear you for half a minute longer, the dog
shall have such a grip on your throat as'll tear some of that screaming
voice out. Wot has come over you, you jade ! Wot is it ? "

" Let me go," said the girl with great earnestness ; then sitting
herself down on the floor, before the door, she said, " Bill, let me go \

The Key turned on Nancy. 277

you don't know wLat you are doing. You don't, indeed. For only
one hour — do — do ! "

" Cut my limbs off one by one ! " cried Sikes, seizing her roughly
by the Jirm, " If I don't think the gal's stark raving mad. Get up."

" Not till you let me ^o — not till you let me go — Never — never 1 "
screamed the girl. Sikes looked on, for a minute, watching his
opportunity, and suddenly pinioning her hands dragged her, struggling
and wrestling with him by the way, into a small room adjoining,
where he sat himself on a bench, and thrusting her into a chair, held
her down by force. She struggled and implored by turns until twelve
o'clock had struck, and then, weaiied and exhausted, ceased to contest
the point any further. With a caution, backed by many oaths, to
make no more efforts to go out that night, Sikes left her to recover at
leisure and rejoined Fagin.

" Whew ! " said the housebreaker wiping the perspii-ation from his
fiice. " Wot a precious strange gal that is ! "

" You may say that, Bill," replied Fagin thoughtfully. " You may
say that."

"Wot did she take it into her head to go out to-night for, do you
think ? " asked Sikes. •' Come ; you should know her better than me.
Wot does it mean ? "

" Obstinacy ; woman's obstinacy, I suppose, my dear."

" Well, I suppose it is," growled Sikes. " I thought I had tamed
her, but she's as bad as ever."

" Worse," said Fagin thoughtfully. " I never knew her like this,
for such a little cause."

" Nor I," said Sikes. " I think she's got a touch of that fever in
her blood yet, and it won't come out — eh ? "

" Like enough."

" I'll let her a little blood, without troubling the doctor, if she's
took that way again," said Sikes.

Fagin nodded an expressive approval of this mode of treatment.

" She was hanging about me all day, and night too, when I was
stretched on my back ; and you, like a blackhearted wolf as you are,
kept yourself aloof," said Sikes. " We was very poor too, all the time,
and I think, one way or other, it's worried and fretted her ; and that
being shut up here so long has made her restless — eh ? "

" That's it, my dear," replied the Jew in a whisper. " Hush ! "

As he uttered these words, the girl herself appeared and resumed
her former seat. Her eyes were swollen and red ; she rocked herself
to and fro ; tossed her head ; and, after a little time, burst out
laughing.

" Why, now she's on the other tack ! " exclaimed Sikes, turning a
look of excessive surprise on his companion.

Fagin nodded to him to take no further notice just then ; and, in
a few minutes, the girl subsided into her accustomed demeanour.
Whispering Sikes that there was no fear of her relapsing, Fagin took

278 Oliver Tzvist

up his hat and bade him good-night. Ho paused when he reached the
room-door, and looking round, asked if somebody would light him
down the dark stairs.

" Light him down," said Sikes, who was filling his pipe. " It's a
pity he should break his neck himself, and disappoint the sight-seers.
Show him a light."

Nancy followed the old man down-etaii's, with a candle. When tlicy
reached the passage, he laid his finger on his lip, and drawing close
to the girl, said, in a whisper,

" What is it, Nancy, dear ? "
,, "What do you mean?" replied the girl, in the same tone.
. " The reason of all this," replied Fagiu. " If lie " — he pointed with
his skinny fore-finger up the stairs — " is so hard with you (he's a

brute, Nance, a brute-beast), why don't you "

, " WeU ? " said the girl, as Fagin paused, with his mouth almost
touching her ear, and his eyes looking into hers.

" No matter just now. We'll talk of this again. You have a friend
in me, Nance ; a staunch friend. I have the means at hand, quiet and
close. If you want revenge on those that treat you like a dog — like
a dog ! worse than his dog, for he humours him sometimes— come to
me. I say, come to me. He is the mere hound of a day, but you
know mo of old, Nance."

" I know you well," replied the girl, without manifesting the least
emotion. " Good-night."

She shrank back, as Fagin offered to lay his hand on hers, but said
good-night again, in a steady voice, and, answering his parting look
with a nod of intelligence, closed the door between them.

Fagin walked towards his own home, intent upon the thoughts that
were working within his brain. He had conceived the idea — not from
what had just passed, though that had tended to confirm him, but
slowly and by degrees — that Nancy, wearied of the house-breaker's
brutality, had conceived an attachment for some new friend. Her
altered manner, her repeated absences from home alone, her com-
parative indifference to the interests of the gang for which she had
once been so zealous, and, added to these, her desperate impatience to
leave home that night at a particular hour, all favoured the supposi-
tion, and rendered it, to him at least, almost matter of certainty. The
object of this new liking was not among his myrmidons. He would
be a valuable acquisition with such an assistant as Nancy, and must
(thus Fagin argued) be secured without delay.

There was another, and a darker object, to be gained. Sikes knew
too much, and his ruffian taunts had not galled Fagin the less, because
the wounds were hidden. The girl must know, well, that if she shook
him off, she could never be safe from his fury, and that it would be
surely wreaked — to the maiming of limbs, or perhaps the loss of life
— on the object of her more recent fancy. " With a little persuasion,"
thought Fagin, " what more likely than that she would consent to

Bolter again in request. 279

poison him? Women have done such things, and worse, to secnre
the same object before now. There wonld bo the dangerous villain :
the man I hate : gone ; another secured in his place ; and my influence
over the girl, with a knowledge of this crime to back it, unlimited."

These things passed through the mind of Fagin, during the short
time he sat alone, in the housebreaker's room ; and with them upper-
most in his thoughts, he had taken the opportunity afterwards afforded
him, of sounding the girl in the broken hints he threw out at parting.
There was no expression of surprise, no assumption of an inability to
understand his meaning. The girl cleai-ly comprehended it. Her
glance at parting showed iliaL

But perhaps she would recoil from a plot to take the life of Sikes,
and that was one of the chief ends to be attained. " How," thought
Fagin, as he crept homeward, " can I increase my influence with her ?
what new power can I acquire ? "

Such brams are fertile in expedients. If, without extracting a con-
fession from herself, he laid a watch, discovered the object of her
altered regard, and threatened to reveal the whole history to Sikes (of
whom she stood in no common fear) unless she entered into his
designs, could he not secure her compliance ?

"I can," said Fagin, almost aloud, " She durst not refuse me then.
Not for her life, not for her life ! I have it all. The means are
ready, and shall be set to work. I shall have you yet ! "

He cast back a dark look, and a threatening motion of the hand,
towards the spot where he had left the bolder villain ; and went on
his way : busying his bony hands in the folds of his tattered garment,
which he wrenched tightly in his grasp, as though there were a hated
enemy crushed with every motion of his fingers.

CHAPTER XLV.

NOAH CLAVrOLE IS EBirLOTED BY FAGIN ON A SECRET MISSION.

The old man was up, betimes, next morning, and waited impatiently
for the appearance of his new associate, who after a delay that seemed
interminable, at length presented himself, and commenced a voracious
assault on the breakfast.

"Bolter," said Fagin, drawing up a chair and seating himself
opposite Morris Bolter.

"Well, here I am," returned Noah. "What's the matter? Don't
yer ask me to do anything tiU I have done eating. That's a great
fault in this place. Yer never get time enough over yer meals."

" You can talk as you eat, can't you ? " said Fagin, cursing his dear
young friend's greediness from the very bottom of bis heart.

28o Oliver Twist.

"Oil yes, 1 can talk. I get on better when I talk," said Noah,
cutting a monstrous slice of bread. " Where's Charlotte ? "

" Out," said Fagin. " I sent her out this morning with the other
young woman, because I wanted us to be alone."

*' Oh ! " said Noah. " I wish yer'd ordered her to make some
buttered toast first. Well. Talk away. Yer won't interrupt me."

There seemed, indeed, no great fear of anything interrupting him,
as he had evidently sat down with a determination to do a great deal
of business.

" You did well yesterday, my dear," said Fagin. " Beautiful ! Six
shillings and ninepence halfpenny on the very first day ! The kinchin
lay will be a fortune to you."

" Don't you forget to add three pint-pots and a milk-can," said Mr.
Bolter.

" No, no, my dear. The pint-pots were great strokes of genius :
but the milk-can was a perfect masterpiece."

" Pretty well, I think, for a beginner," remarked Mr. Bolter com-
placently. " The pots I took off airy railings, and the milk-can was
standing by itself outside a public-house. I thought it might get
rusty with the rain, or catch cold, yer know. Eh ? Ha ! ha ! ha ! "

Fagin affected to laugh very heartily ; and Mr. Bolter having had
his laugh out, took a series of large bites, which finished his first
hunk of bread and butter, and assisted himself to a second.

" 1 want you. Bolter," said Fagin, leaning over the table, " to do a
piece of work for me, my dear, that needs great care and caution."

" I say," rejoined Bolter, " don't yer go shoving me into danger, or
sending me to any more o' yer police-offices. That don't suit me,
that don't ; and so I tell yer."

" There's not the smallest danger in it — not the very smallest," said
the Jew ; " it's only to dodge a woman,"

" An old woman ? " demanded Mr. Bolter.

" A young one," replied Fagin.

" 1 can do that pretty well, I know," said Bolter. " I was a regular
cunning sneak when I was at school. What am I to dodge her for ?
Not to "

" Not to do anything, but to tell me where she goes, who she sees,
and, if possible, what she says ; to remember the street, if it is a
street, or the house, if it is a house ; and to bring me back all the
information you can."

" W^hat'll yer give me ? " asked Noah, setting down his cup, and
looking his employer, eagerly, in the face.

" If you do it well, a pound, my dear. One pound," said Fagin,
wishing to interest him in the scent as much as possible. " And that's
what I never gave yet, for any job of work where there wasn't valuable
consideration to be gained."

•' Who is she ? " in<juired Noah,

" One of us,"

The Spy set on Naticy. 281

" Oh Loi- ! " cried Noah, curling up his nose. " Yer doubtful of
her, are yer ? "

" She has found out some new friends, my dear, and I must know
who they are,'' replied Fagin.

• " I see," said Noah. " Just to have the pleasure of knowing them,
if they're respectable people, eh ? Ha ! ha ! ha ! I'm your man."

" I knew you would be," cried Fagin, elated by the success of hia
proposal.

" Of course, of course," replied Noah. " Where is she ? Where
am I to wait for her ? Where am I to go ? "

•' All that, my dear, you shall hear from me. I'll point her out at
the proper time," said Fagin. " You keep ready, and leave the rest
to me."

That night, and the next, and the next again, the spy sat booted and
equipped in his carter's dress : ready to turn out at a word from
Fagin. Six nights passed — six long weary nights — and on each,
Fagin came home with a disappointed face, and briefly intimated that
it was not yet time. On the seventh, he returned earlier, and with an
exultation he could not conceal. It was Sunday.

" She goes abroad to-night," said Fagin, " and on the right errand,
I'm sure ; for she has been alone all day, and the man she is afraid
of, will not be back much before daybreak. Come with me. Quick!"

Noah started up without saying a word ; for the Jew was in a state
of such intense excitement that it infected him. They left the house
stealthily, and, hurrying through a labyrinth of streets, arrived at
length before a public-house, which Noah recognised as the same in
which he had slept, on the night of his arrival in London.

It was past eleven o'clock, and the door was closed. It opened
softly on its hinges as Fagin gave a low whistle. They entered,
without noise ; and the door was closed behind them.

Scarcely venturing to whisper, but substituting dumb show for
words, Fagin, and the young Jew who had admitted them, pointed out
the pane of glass to Noah, and signed to him to climb up and observe
the person in the adjoining room.

" Is that the woman ? " he asked, scarcely above his breath.

Fagin nodded yes.

"I can't see her face well," whispered Noah. "She is looking
down, and the candle is behind her."

" Stay there," whispered Fagin. He signed to Barney, who with-
drew. In an instant, the lad entered the room adjoining, and, under
pretence of snufi&ng the candle, moved it in the required position, and,
speaking to the girl, caused her to raise her face.

" I see her now," cried the spy.

"Plainly?"

" I should know her among a thousand."

He hastily descended, as the room-door opened, and the girl came
out, Fagin drew him behind a small partition which was curtained

282 Oliver Twist

off, and they held their breaths as she passed within a few feet of
their place of concealment, and emerged by the door at which they
had entered.

" Hist ! " cried the lad who held the door. «' Dow."

Noah exchanged a look with Fagin, and darted ont.

" To the left," whispered the lad ; " take the left had, and keep od
the other side."

He did so ; and, by the light of the lamps, saw the girl's retreating
figure, already at some distance before him. He advanced as near as
ho considered prudent, and kept on the opposite side of the street, the
better to observe her motions. She looked nervously round, twice or
thrice, and once stopped to let two men who were following close
behind her, pass on. She seemed to gather courage as she advanced,
and to walk with a steadier and firmer step. The spy preserved the
same relative distance between them, and followed : with his eye
upon her.

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE APPOINTMENT KEPT.

The church clocks chimed three quartere past eleven, as two figures
emerged on London Bridge. One, which advanced with a swift and
rapid step, was that of a woman who looked eagerly about her as
though in quest of some expected object ; the other figure was that of
a man, who slunk along in the deepest shadow he could find, and, at
some distance, accommodated his pace to hers : stopping when she
stopped : and as she moved again, creeping stealthily on : but never
allowing himself, in the ardour of his pursuit, to gain upon her foot-
steps. Thus, they crossed the bridge, from the Middlesex to the
Surrey shore, when the woman, apparently disappointed in her anxious
scrutiny of the foot-passengers, turned back. The movement was
sudden ; but he who watched her, was not thrown ofi" his guard by it ;
for, shrinking into one of the recesses which surmount the piers of the
bridge, and leaning over the parapet the better to conceal his figure,
he suffered her to pass on the opposite pavement. When she was
about the same distance in advance as she had been before, he slipped
quietly down, and followed her again. At nearly the centre of the
bridge, she stopped. The man stopped too.

It was a very dark night. The day had been unfavourable, and at
that hour and place there were few people stirring. Such as there
were, hurried quickly past : very possibly without seeing, but certainly
without noticing, either the woman, or the man who kept her in view.
Their appearance was not calculated to attract the importunate regards

The Meeting on the Bridge, 283

of such of London's destitute population, as chanced to take tlieir way
over the bridge that night in search of some cold arch or doorlcss
hovel wherein to lay their heads ; they stood there in silence : neither
speaking nor spoken to, by any one who passed.

A mist hung over the river, deepening the rod glare of the fires that
bui'nt upon the small craft moored off the different wharfs, and render-
ing darker and more indistinct the mirky buildings on the banks.
The old smoke-stained storehouses on either side, rose heavy and dull
fi-ora the dense mass of roofs and gables, and frowned sternly upon
water too black to reflect even their lumbering shapes. The tower of
old Saint Saviour's Church, and the spire of Saint Magnus, so long
the giant-warders of the ancient bridge, were visible in the gloom ;
but the forest of shipping below bridge, and the thickly scattered
spires of churches above, were nearly all hidden from the sight.

The giii had taken a few restless turns to and fro — closely watched
meanwhile by her hidden observer — when the heavy bell of St. Paul's
tolled for the death of another day. Midnight had come upon the
crowded city. The palace, the night-cellar, the jail, the madhouse :
the chambers of birth and death, of health and sickness, the rigid face
of the corpse and the calm sleep of the child : midnight was upon
them all.

The hour had not struck two minutes, when a young lady, accom-
panied by a grey-haired gentleman, alighted from a hackney-carriage
within a short distance of the bridge, and, having dismissed the
vehicle, walked straight towards it. They had scarcely set foot upon
its pavement, when the girl started, and immediately made towai-ds
them.

They walked onward, looking about them with the air of persons
who entertained some very slight expectation which had little chance
of being realised, when they were suddenly joined by this new
associate. They halted with an exclamation of surprise, but sup-
pressed it immediately; for a man in the garments of a country-
man came close up— brushed against them, indeed — at that precise
moment.

" Not here," said Nancy hurriedly, " I am afraid to speak to you
here. Come away — out of the public road — down the steps yonder ! "

As she uttered these words, and indicated, with her hand, the
direction in which she wished them to proceed, the countryman looked
round, and roughly asking what they took up the whole pavement for,
passed on.

The steps to which the girl had pointed, were those which, on the
Surrey bank, and on the same side of the bridge as Saint Saviour's
Church, form a landing-stairs from the river. To tliis spot, the man
bearing the appearance of a countryman, hastened unobserved ; and
after a moment's survey of the place, ho began to descend.

These stairs are a part of the bridge ; they consist of three flights.
Just below the end of the second, going down, the stone wall on the

284 Oliver Twist.

left terminates in an ornamental pilaster facing towards the Thames.
At this point the lower steps widen : so that a person turning that
angle of the wall, is necessarily unseen by any others on the stairs
who chance to be above him, if only a step. The countryman looked
hastily round, when he reached this point ; and as there seemed no
better place of concealment, and, the tide being out, there was plenty
of room, he slipped aside, with his back to tlie pilaster, and there
waited : pretty certain that they would come no lower, and that even
if he could not hear what was said, he could follow them again, with
safety.

So tardily stole the time in this lonely place, and so eager was the
spy to penetrate the motives of an interview so different from what he
had been led to expect, that he more than once gave the matter up
for lost, and persuaded himself, either that they had stopped far
above, or had resorted to some entirely different spot to hold their
mysterious conversation. He was on the point of emerging from his
hiding-place, and regaining the road above, when he heard tlie sound
of footsteps, and dii-ectly afterwards of voices almost close at his
ear.

He drew himself straight upright against the wall, and, scarcely
breathing, listened attentively,

" This is far enough," said a voice, which was evidently that of the
gentleman. " I will not suffer the young lady to go any farther.
Many people would have distrusted you too much to have come even
BO far, but you see I am willing to humour you."

" To humour me ! " cried the voice of the girl whom he had
followed. " You're considerate, indeed, sir. To humour me ! Well,
well, it's no matter.'

" Why, for what," said the gentleman in a kinder tone, " for what
purpose can you have brought us to this strange place ? Why not
have let me speak to you, above there, where it is light, and there is
something stirring, instead of bringing us to this dark and dismal
hole ? "

" I told you before," replied Nancy, " that I was afraid to speak to
you there. I don't know why it is," said the girl, shuddering, " but
I have such a fear and dreaid upon me to-night that I can hardly
stand."

" A fear of what ? " asked the gentleman, who seemed to pity her.

" I scarcely know of what," replied the girl. " I wish I did.
Horrible thoughts of death, and shrouds with blood upon them, and a
fear that has made me burn as if I was on fire, have been upon me all
day. I was reading a book to-night, to wile the time away, and the
same things came into the print."

" Imagination," said the gentleman, soothing her.

" No imagination," replied the girl in a hoarse voice. " I'll swear
I saw ' coffin ' written in every page of the book in large black letters,
— aye, and they carried one close to me, in the streets to-night."

C//ir. \.^^e/>yrc<.

3^

'■■^^

TJie Spy under the Wall. 285

" There is nothing nnnsaal in that," said the gentleman. " They
have passed me often."

" B.eal ones" rejoined the girl. " This was not."

There was something so uncommon in her manner, that the flesh of
the concealed listener crept as he heard the girl utter these words, and
the blood chilled within him. He had never experienced a greater
relief than in hearing the sweet voice of the young lady as she begged
her to be calm, and not allow herself to become the prey of such
fearful fancies.

" Speak to her kindly," said the young lady to her companion.
" Poor creature ! She seems to need it."

" Your haughty religious people would have held their heads up to
see me as I am to-night, and preached of flames and vengeance," cried
the girl. " Oh, dear lady, why ar'n't those who claim to be God's
own folks as gentle and as kind to us poor wretches as you, who,
having youth, and beauty, and all that they have lost, might be a
little proud instead of so much humbler ? "

" Ah ! " said the gentleman. " A Turk tum^ his face, after washing
it well, to the East, when he says his pi-ayors ; these good people, after
giving their faces such a rub against the World as to take the smiles
ofi', turn with no less regularity, to the darkest side of Heaven.
Between the Mussulman and the Pharisee, commend me to the first ! "

These words appeared to be addressed to the young lady, and were
perhaps uttered with the view of affording Nancy time to recover
herself. The gentleman, shortly afterwards, addressed himself to her.

" You were not here last Sunday night," he said.

" I couldn't come," replied Nancy ; " I was kept by force."

" By whom ? "

" Him that I told the young lady of before."

"You were not suspected of holding any communication with
anybody on the subject which has brought us here to-night, I hope ? "
asked the old gentleman.

" No," replied the girl, shaking her head. " It's not very easy for
me to leave him unless he knows why ; I couldn't have seen the lady
when I did, but that I gave him a drink of laudanum before I came
away."

" Did he awake before you returned ? " inquired the gentleman.

" No ; and neither he nor any of them suspect me."

" Good," said the gentleman. " Now listen to me."

" I am ready," replied the girl, as he paused for a moment.

" This young lady," the gentleman began, " has communicated to
me, and to some other friends who can be safely trusted, what you
told her nearly a fortnight since. I confess to you that I had doubts,
at first, whether you were to be implicitly relied upon, but now I
firmly believe you are."

" I am," said the girl earnestly.

"I repeat that I fiimly believe it. To prove to you that I am

286 Oliver Twist.

disposed to trust yon, I tell you without reserve, that we propose to
extort the secret, whatever it may be, from the fear of this man Monks.
But if — if — " said the gentleman, "he cannot be secured, or, if
secured, cannot be acted upon as we wish, you must deliver up the
Jew."

" Fagin," cried the girl, recoiling.

" That man must bo delivered up by you," said the gentleman.

" I will not do it ! I will never do it ! " replied the gii-1. " Devil
that he is, and worse than devil as he has been to me, I will never do
that."

" You will not ? " said the gentleman, who seemed fully prepared
for this answer.

" Never !" returned the girl.

" Tell me why ? "

" For one reason," rejoined the girl firmly, " for one reason, that
the lady knows and will stand by me in, I know she will, for I have
her promise ; and for this other reason, besides, that, bad life as ho
has led, I have led a bad life too ; there are many of us who have
kept the same courses together, and I'll not turn upon them, who might
— any of them — have turned upon me, but didn't, bad as they are."

" Then," said the gentleman, quickly, as if this had been the point
he had been aiming to attain ; " put Monks into my hands, and leave
him to me to deal with."

" What if he turns against the others ? "

" I promise you that in that case, if the truth is forced from him,
there the matter will rest ; there must be circumstances in Oliver's
little history which it would bo painful to drag before the public eye,
and if the truth is once elicited, they shall go scot free."

" And if it is not ? " suggested the girl.

" Then," pursued the gentleman, " this Fagin shall not be brought
to justice without your consent. In such a case I could show you
reasons, I think, which would induce you to yield it."

" Have I the lady's promise for that ? " asked the girl.

" You have," replied Eose. " My true and faithful pledge."

" Monks would never learn how you knew what you do ? " said the
girl, after a short pause.

" Never," replied the gentleman. " The intelligence should be so
brought to bear upon him, that he could never even guess."

" I have been a liar, and among liars from a little child," said the
girl after another interval of silence, " but I will take your words."

After receiving an assurance from both, that she might safely do
60, she proceeded in a voice so low that it was often difficult for the
listener to discover even the purport of what she said, to describe, by
name and situation, the public-house whence she had been followed
that night. From the manner in which she occasionally paused, it
appeared as if the gentleman were making some hasty notes of the
ioforiuatiou she communio^ed. When she had thoroughly explained

Nancy's Disclosure. 287

the localities of the place, the best position from which to watch it
without exciting observation, and the night and hour on which Monks
was most in the habit of frequenting it, she seemed to consider for a
few moments, for the purpose of recalling his features and appearance
more forcibly to her recollection.

"He is tall," said the girl, "and a strongly made man, but not
stout ; he has a luiking walk ; and as ho walks, constantly looks over
his shoulder, first on one side, and then on the other. Don't forget
that, for his eyes are sunk in his head so much deeper than any other
man's, that you might almost tell him by that alone. His face is
dark, like his haii* and eyes ; and, although he can't be more than six
or eight and twenty, withered and haggard. His lips are often dis-
coloured and disfigured with the marks of teeth ; for he has desperate
fits, and sometimes even bites his hands and covers them with wounds
— why did you start ? " said the giii, stopping suddenly.

The gentleman replied, in a hurried manner, that he was not con-
scious of having done so, and begged her to proceed.

" Part of this," said the girl, " I have drawn out from other people
at the house I tell you of, for I have only seen him twice, and both
times he was covered up in a largo cloak. I think that's all I can
give you to know him by. Stay though," she added. "Upon his
throat : so high that you can see a part of it below his neckerchief
when he turns his face : there is "

" A broad red mark, like a burn or scald ? " cried the gentleman.

« How's this ? " said the gii-1. " You know him ! "

The young lady uttered a cry of surprise, and for a few moments
they were so still that the listener could distinctly hear them breathe.

" I think I do," said the gentleman, breaking silence. " I should
by your description. We shall see. Many people are singularly like
each other. It may not be the same."

As he expressed himself to this effect, with assumed carelessness,
he took a step or two nearer the concealed spy, as the latter could tell
from the distinctness with which he heard him mutter, " It must
behe!"

" Now," he said, returning : so it seemed by the sound : to the spot
where he had stood before, " you have given us most valuable assistance,
young woman, and I wish you to be the better for it. What can I
do to serve you ? "

" Nothing," replied Nancy.

" You will not persist in saying that," rejoined the gentleman, with
a voice and emphasis of kindness that might have touched a much
harder and more obdurate heart. " Think now. Tell me."

" Nothing, sir," rejoined the giil, weeping. " You can do nothing
to help me. I am past all hope, indeed."

" You put yourself beyond its pale," said the gentleman. " The
past has been a dreary waste with you, of youthful energies mis-spent,
and such priceless treasures lavished, as the Creator bestows but once

288 Olivei^ Twist.

and nevoi' grants again, but, for the future, you may hope. I do not
say that it is in our power to offer you peace of heart and mind, for
that must come as you seek it ; but a quiet asylxun, either in England,
or, if you fear to remain here, in some foreign country, it is not only
within the compass of our ability but our most anxious wish to secure
you. Before the dawn of morning, before this river wakes to the first
glimpse of daylight, you shall be placed as entirely beyond the reach
of your former associates, and leave as utter an absence of all trace
behind you, as if you were to disappear from the earth this moment.
Come ! I would not have you go back to exchange one word with
any old companion, or take one look at any old haunt, or breathe the
very air which is pestilence and death to you. Quit them all, while
there is time and opportunity ! "

" She will be persuaded now," cried the young lady. " She
hesitates, I am sure."

" I fear not, my dear," said the gentleman.

" No, sir, I do not," replied the girl, after a short struggle. " I am
chained to my old life. I loathe and hate it now, but I cannot leave
it. I must have gone too far to turn back, — and yet I don't know, for
if you had spoken to me so, some time ago, I should have laughed it
off. But," she said, looking hastily round, " this fear comes over me
again. I must go home."

" Home ! " repeated the young lady, with great stress upon the
word.

" Home, lady," rejoined the girl. " To such a home as I have
raised for myself with the work of my whole life. Let us part. I
shall be watched or seen. Go ! Go ! If I have done you any
service, all I ask is, that you leave me, and let me go my way alone."

" It is useless," said the gentleman, with a sigh. " We compromise
her safety, perhaps, by staying here. We may have detained her
longer than she expected already."

" Yes, yes," urged the girl. " You have."

" What," cried the young lady, " can be the end of this poor
creature's life ! "

" What ! " repeated the girl. " Look before you, lady. Look at
that dark water. How many times do you read of such as I who
spring into the tide, and leave no living thing, to care for, or bewail
them. It may be years hence, or it may be only months, but I shall
come to that at last."

" Do not speak thus, pray," returned the young lady, sobbing.

" It will never reach your ears, dear lady, and God forbid such
horrors should ! " replied the girl. " Good-night, good-night ! "

The gentleman turned away.

" This purse," cried the young lady. " Take it for my sake, that
you may have some resource in an hour of need and trouble."

" No ! '' replied the girl. " I have not done this for money. Let
me have that to think of. And yet — give me something that you

The Spy makes off with his News. 289

have worn : I should like to have something — no, no, not a ring —
your gloves or handkerchief — anything that I can keep, as having
belonged to you, sweet lady. There. Bless you! God bless you.
Good-night, good-night ! "

The violent agitation of the girl, and the apprehension of some dis-
covery which would subject her to ill-usage and violence, seemed to
determine the gentleman to leave her, as she requested. The sound
of retreating footsteps were audible and the voices ceased.

The two figures of the young lady and her companion soon after-
wards appeared upon the bridge. They stopped at the summit of the
stairs.

" Hark ! " cried the young lady, listening. " Did she call ! I
thought I heard her voice."

" No, my love," replied Mr. Brownlow, looking sadly back. " She
has not moved, and will not till we are gone."

Rose Maylie lingered, but the old gentleman drew her arm through
his, and led her, with gentle force, away. As they disappeared, the
gii-1 sunk down nearly at her full length upon one of the stone stairs,
and vented the anguish of her heart in bitter tears.

After a time she arose, and with feeble and tottering steps ascended
to the street. The astonished listener remained motionless on his
post for some minutes afterwards, and having ascertained, with many
cautious glances round him, that he was again alone, crept slowly from
his hiding-place, and returned, stealthily and in the shade of the wall,
in the same manner as he had descended.

Peeping out, more than once, when he reached the top, to make sure
that he was unobserved, Noah Claypole darted away at his utmost
speed, and made for the Jew's house as fast as his legs would caiTy
him.

CHAPTER XLVIL

FATAL CONSBQUKNCES.

It was nearly two hours before day-break ; that time which in the
autumn of the year, may be truly called the dead of night ; when the
streets are silent and deserted ; when even sounds appear to slumber,
and profligacy and riot have staggered home to dream ; it was at this
still and silent hour, that Fagin sat watching in his old lair, with face
so distorted and pale, and eyes so red and bloodshot, that he looked
less like a man, than like some hideous phantom, moist from the
grave, and worried by an evil spirit.

He sat crouching over a cold hearth, wrapped in an old torn coverlet,
with his face turned towards a wasting candle that stood upon a table

O

2go Oliver Twist.

by his side. His right haud was raised to his lips, and as, absorbed
in thought, he bit his long black nails, he disclosed among his tooth-
less gums a few such fangs as should have been a dog's or rat's.

Stretched upon a mattress on the floor, lay Noah Claypole, fast
asleep. Towards him the old man sometimes directed his eyes for an
instant, and then brought them back again to the candle ; which with
a long-burnt wick drooping almost double, and hot grease falling down
in clots upon the table, plainly showed that his thoughts were busy
elsewhere.

Indeed they were. Mortification at the overthrow of his notable
scheme ; hatred of the girl who had dared to palter with strangers ;
an utter distrust of the sincerity of her refusal to yield him up ; bitter
disappointment at the loss of his revenge on Sikes ; the fear of detec-
tion, and ruin, and death ; and a fierce and deadly rage kindled by
all ; these were the passionate considerations whicli, following close
upon each other with rapid and ceaseless whirl, shot through the brain
of Fagin, as every evil thought and blackest purpose lay working at
his heart.

He sat without changing his attitude in the least, or appealing to
take the smallest heed of time, until his quick ear seemed to be
attracted by a footstep in the street.

" At last," he muttered, wiping his dry and fevered mouth. " At
last ! "

The bell rang gently as he spoke. He crept up-stairs to the door,
and presently returned accompanied by a man muffled to the chin, who
carried a bundle under one arm. Sitting down and throwing back his
outer coat, the man displayed the burly frame of Sikes.

" There ! " he said, laying the bundle on the table. " Take care of
that, and do the most you can with it. It's been trouble enough to
get ; I thought I should have been here, three hours ago."

Fagin laid his hand upon the bundle, and locking it in the cup-
board, sat down again without speaking. But he did not take his
eyes off the robber, for an instant, during this action ; and now that
they sat over against each other, face to face, he looked fixedly at him,
with his lips quivering so violently, and his face so altered by the
emotions which had mastered him, that the housebreaker involuntarily
drew back his chair, and surveyed him with a look of real affright.

" Wot now ? " cried Sikes. " Wot do you look at a man so
for?"

Fagin raised his right hand, and shook his trembling forefinger in
the air ; but his passion was so great, that the power of speech was
for the moment gone.

" Damme ! " said Sikes, feeling in his breast with a look of alarm.
" He's gone mad. I must look to myself here."

" No, no," rejoined Fagin, finding his voice. " It's not — you're not
the person. Bill. I've no — no fault to find with you."

" Oh, you haven't, haven't you ? " said Sikes, looking sternly at him,

Goading the Wild Beast. 29 1

and osteutatiously passing a pistol into a more convenient pockei
" That's lucky — for one of tis. Which one that is, don't matter."

" I've got that to tell you, Bill," said Fagin, drawing his chair
nearer, " \vill make you worse than me."

" Aye ? " returned the robber with an incredulous air. " Tell away !
Look sharp, or Nance will think I'm lost."

" Lost I " cried Fagin. " She has pretty well settled that, in her
own mind, already."

Sikes looked with an aspect of great perplexity into the Jew's face,
and reading no satisfactory explanation of the riddle there, clenched
his coat collar in his huge hand and shook him soundly.

" Speak, will you ! " he said ; " or if you don't, it shall be for want
of breath. Open your mouth and say wot you've got to say in plain
words. Out with it, you thundering old cur, out with it ! "

" Suppose that lad that's lying there " Fagin began.

Sikes turned round to where Noah was sleeping, as if he had not
previously observed him. " Well ! " he said, resuming his former
position.

" Suppose that lad," pursued Fagin, "was to peach — to blow upon
us all — first seeking out the right folks for the purpose, and then
having a meeting with 'em in the street to paint our likenesses,
describe every mark that they might know us by, and the crib where
we might be most easily taken. Suppose he was to do all this, and
besides to blow upon a plant we've all been in, more or less — of his
own fancy ; not grabbed, trapped, tried, earwigged by the parson and
brought to it on bread and water, — but of his own fancy ; t« please his
owTi taste ; stealing out at nights to find those most interested against
us, and peaching to them. Do you hear me ? " cried the Jew, his eyes
flashing with rage. " Suppose he did all this, what then ? "

" What then ! " replied Sikes ; with a tremendous oath. " If he was
left alive till I came, I'd grind his skull under the iron heel of my
boot into as many grains as there are hairs upon his head."

" What if I did it ! " cried Fagin almost in a yell. " J, that know
BO much, and could hang so many besides myself! "

" I don't know," replied Sikes, clenching his teeth and tui-ning white
at the mere suggestion. " I'd do something in the jail that 'ud get me
put in irons ; and if I was tried along with you, I'd fall upon you with
them in the open court, and beat your brains out afore the people. I
should have such strength," muttered the robber, poising his brawny
arm, " that I could smash your head as if a loaded waggon had gone
over it."

"Yon would?"

" Would 1 1 " said the housebreaker. " Try me."

" If it was Charley, or the Dodger, or Bet, or "

" I don't care who," replied Sikes impatiently. " Whoever it was,
IM serve them the same."

Fagin looked hard at the robber ; and, motioning him to be siloafc,

292 Oliver Twist

stooped over the bed upon the floor, and shook the sleeper to rouso
him. Sikes leant forward in his chair : looking on with his hands
upon his knees, as if wondering much what all this questioning and
preparation was to end in.

" Bolter, Bolter ! Poor lad ! " said Fagin, looking up with an
expression of devilish anticipation, and speaking slowly and with
marked emphasis. " He's tired — tired with watching for Jicr so long,
— watching for Aer, Bill."

" Wot d'ye mean ? " asked Sikes, drawing back.

Fagin made no answer, but bending over the sleeper again, hauled
him into a sitting posture. When his assumed name had been repeated
several times, Noah rubbed his eyes, and, giving a heavy yawn, looked
sleepily about him.

" Tell me that again — once again, just for him to hear," said the
Jew, pointing to Sikes as he spoke.

" Tell yer what ? " asked the sleepy Noah, shaking himself pettishly.

" That about — Nancy," said Fagin, clutching Sikes by the wrist, as
if to prevent his leaving the house before he had heard enough. " You
followed her ? "

" Yes."

« To London Bridge ? "

"Yes."

" Where she met two people ? "

« So she did."

" A gentleman and a lady that she had gone to of her own accord
before, who asked her to give up all her pals, and Monks first, which
she did — and to describe him, which she did — and to tell her what
house it was that we meet at, and go to, which she did — and where it
could be best watched from, which she did — and what time the people
went there, which she did. She did all this. She told it all every
word without a threat, without a murmur — she did — did she not ? "
cried Fagin, half mad with fury.

" All right," replied Noah, scratching his head. " That's just what
it was!"

" What did they say, about last Sunday ? "

" About last Sunday ! " replied Noah, considering. " Why I told
yer that before."

" Again. Tell it again ! " cried Fagin, tightening his grasp on
Sikes, and brandishing his other hand aloft, as the foam flew from his
lips.

"They asked her," said Noah, who, as ho grew more wakeful,
seemed to liave a dawning perception who Sikes was, " they asked her
why she didn't come, last Sunday, as she promised. She said she
couldn't."

" Why— why ? Tell him that."

" Because she was forcibly kept at home by Bill, the man she had
told them of before," replied Noah.

Goaded to Madness. 293

" Wlint more of him ? " cried Fagin. " WLat more of the man sho
had told them of before ? Tell him that, tell him that."

" Why, that she conldn't very easily get out of doors unless he knew
where sho was going to," said Noah ; " and so the first time she went
to see the lady, she — ha ! ha ! ha ! it made me laugh when she said it,
that it did — she gave him a drink of laudanum."

" Hell's fire ! " cried Sikes, breaking fiercely from the Jew. " Let
me go ! **

Flinging the old man from him, he rushed from the room, and
darted, wildly and furiously, up the stairs.

" Bill, Bill ! " cried Fagin, following him hastily. " A word. Only
a word."

The word would not have been exchanged, but that the house-
breaker was unable to open the door : on which he was expending
fruitless oaths and violence, when the Jew came panting up.

" Let me out," said Sikes. " Don't speak to me ; it's not safe. Let
me out, I say ! "

" Hear me speak a word," rejoined Fagin, laying his hand upon the
lock. " You won't be "

" Well," replied the other.

« You won't be— too— violent. Bill ? "

The day was breaking, and there was light enough for the men to
see each other's faces. They exchanged one brief glance ; there was
a fire in the eyes of both, which could not be mistaken.

" I mean," said Fagin, showing that he felt all disguise was now
useless, " not too violent for safety. Be crafty, Bill, and not too bold."

Sikes made no reply ; but, pulling open the door, of which Fagin
had turned the lock, dashed into the silent streets.

Without one pause, or moment's consideration ; without once
turning his head to the right or left, or raising his eyes to the sky,
or lowering them to the ground, but looking straight before him with
savage resolution : his teeth so tightly compressed that the strained
jaw seemed starting through his skin ; the robber held on his head-
long course, nor muttered a word, nor relaxed a muscle, until he
reached his own door. He opened it, softly, with a key ; strode
lightly up the stairs ; and entering his own room, double-locked the
door, and lifting a heavy table against it, drew back the curtain of the
bed.

The girl was lying, half-dressed, upon it. He had roused her from
her sleep, for she raised herself with a hurried and startled look.

" Get up ! " said the man.

" It is you, Bill ! " said the girl, with an expression of pleasure at
his return.

" It is," was the reply. " Get up."

There was a candle burning, but the man hastily drew it from the
candlestick, and hurled it under the grate. Seeing the faint light of
early dajr without, the girl rose to undraw the curt^,

294 Oliver Twist.

"Let it be," said Sikes, tbmsting his hand before her. "There's
light enough for wot I've got to do."

" Bill," said the girl, in the low voice of alarm, " why do you look
like that at me ! "

The robber sat regarding her, for a few seconds, with dilated
nostrils and heaving breast ; and then, grasping her by the head and
throat, dragged her into the middle of the room, and looking once
towards the door, placed his heavy hand upon her mouth.

" Bill, Bill ! " gasped the girl, wrestling with the strength of mortal
fear, — " I — I won't scream or cry — not once — hear me — speak to me
— tell me what I have done ! "

" You know, you she devil ! " returned the robber, suppressing his
breath. "You were watched to-night; every word you said was
hoard."

" Then spare my life for the love of Heaven, as I spared yours,"
rejoined the girl, clinging to him. " Bill, dear Bill, you cannot have
the heart to kill me. Oh ! think of all I have given up, only this one
night, for you. You sliall have time to think, and save yourself
this crime ; I will not loose my hold, you cannot throw me off. Bill,
Bill, for dear God's sake, for your own, for mine, stop before you spill
my blood ! I have been true to you, upon my guilty soul I have ! "

The man struggled violently, to release his arms ; but those of the
girl were clasped round his, and tear her as he would, he could not
tear them away.

"Bill," cried the girl, striving to lay her head upon his breast,
" the gentleman and that dear lady, told me to-night of a home in some
foreign country where I could end my days in solitude and peace.
Let me see them again, and beg them, on my knees, to show the same
mercy and goodness to you ; and let us both leave this dreadful place,
and far apart lead better lives, and forget how we have lived, except
in prayers, and never see each other more. It is never too late to
repent. They told me so — I feel it now — but we must have time — a
little, little time 1 "

The house-breaker freed one arm, and grasped his pistol. The
certainty of immediate detection if he fired, flashed across his mind
even in the midst of his fury ; and he beat it twice with all the force
he could summon, upon the upturned face that almost touched his
own.

She staggered and fell : nearly blinded with the blood that rained
down from a deep gash in her forehead; but raising herself, with
difficulty, on her knees, drew from her bosom a white handkerchief —
Rose Maylie's own — and holding it up, in her folded hands, as high
towards Heaven as her feeble strength would allow, breathed one
prayer for mercy to her Maker.

It was a ghastly figure to look upon. The murderer staggering
backward to the wall, and shutting out the sight with his hand, seized
a heavy club and struck her down.

CHAPTEB XLVIII.

THE FLIGHT OF BIKES.

Of all bad deeds that, under cover of the darkness, had been com-
mitted within wide London's bounds since night hung over it, that
was the worst. Of all the horrors that rose with an ill scent upon
the morning air, that was the foulest and most ciniel.

The sun — the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new
life, and hope, and freshness to man — burst upon the crowded city in
clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper-
mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed
its equal ray. It lighted up the room where the murdered woman
lay. It did. Ho tried to shut it out, but it would stream in. If tho
sight had been a ghastly one in the dull morning, what was it, now,
in all that brilliant light !

He had not moved ; he had been afraid to stir. There had been a
moan and motion of the hand ; and, with terror added to rage, ho had
struck and struck again. Once he threw a rug over it ; but it was
worse to fancy the eyes, and imagine them moving towards him, than
to see them glaring upward, as if watching the reflection of the pool
of gore that quivered and danced in the sunlight on the ceiling. He
had plucked it off again. And there was the body — mere flesh and
blood, no more — but such flesh, and so much blood !

He stmck a light, kindled a fire, and thrust the club into it. There
was hair upon the end, which blazed and shrunk into a light cinder,
and, caught by the air, whirled up tho chimney. Even that frightened
him, sturdy as he was ; but he held the weapon till it broke, and then
piled it on the coals to burn away, and smoulder into ashes. He
washed himself, and rubbed his clothes ; there were spots that would
not be removed, but he cut the pieces out, and burnt them. How
those stains were dispersed about the room ! The very feet of the dog
were bloody.

All this time he had, never once, turned his back upon the corpse ;
no, not for a naoment. Such preparations completed, he moved, back-
ward, towards the door : dragging the dog with him, lest he should soil
his feet anew and carry out new evidences of the crime into the streets.
He shut the door softly, locked it, took the key, and left the house.

He crossed over, and glanced up at the window, to bo sure that
nothing was visible from the outside. There was the curtain still
drawn, which she would have opened to admit the light she never saw
again. It lay nearly under there. He knew that. God, how the sun
poured down upon the very spot !

Tho glance was instantaneous. It was a relief to have got free of
the room. He whistled on the dog, and walked rapidly away.

296 Oliver Tzvist.

He went througli Islington; strode up the hill at Highgatc on
which stands the stone in honour of Whittington; turned down to
Highgate Hill, unsteady of purpose, and uncertain where to go ;
struck off to the right again, almost as soon as he began to descend
it ; and taking the foot-path across the fields, skirted Caen Wood, and
60 came out on Hampstead Heath. Traversing the hollow by the Vale
of Health, he mounted the opposite bank, and crossing the road which
joins the villages of Hampstead and Highgate, made along the
remaining portion of the heath to the fields at North End, in one of
which he laid himself down under a hedge, and slept.

Soon he was up again, and away, — not far into the country, but
back towards London by the high-road — then back again — then over
another part of the same ground as he already traversed — thenwandei-ing
up and down in fields, and lying on ditches' brinks to rest, and starting
up to make for some other spot, and do the same, and ramble on again.

Where could he go, that was near and not too public, to get some
meat and drink ? Hendon. That was a good place, not far off, and
out of most people's way. Thither he directed his steps, — running
sometimes, and sometimes, with a strange perversity, loitering at a
snail's pace, or stopping altogether and idly breaking the hedges
with his stick. But when he got there, all the people he met — the
very children at the doors— seemed to view him with suspicion.
Back he turned again, without the courage to purchase bit or drop,
though he had tasted no food for many hours ; and once more he
lingered on the Heath, uncertain where to go.

He wandered over miles and miles of ground, and still came back to
the old place. Morning and noon had passed, and the day was on the
wane, and still he rambled to and fro, and up and down, and round
and round, and still lingered about the same spot. At last he got
away, and shaped his course for Hatfield.

It was nine o'clock at night, when the man, quite tired out, and the
dog, limping and lame from the unaccustomed exercise, turned down
the hill by the church of the quiet village, and plodding along the
little street, crept into a small public-house, whose scanty light had
guided them to the spot. There was a fire in the tap-room, and some
country-labourers were drinking before it. They made room for the
stranger, but he sat down in the furthest corner, and ate and drank
alone, or rather with his dog : to whom he cast a morsel of food from
time to time.

The conversation of the men assembled here, turned upon the
neighbouring land, and farmers ; and when those topics were ex-
hausted, upon the age of some old man who had been buried on the
previous Sunday ; the young men present considering him very old,
and the old men present declaring him to have been quite young —
not older, one white-haired grandfather said, than ho was — with ten
or fifteen year of life in him at least — if he had taken care ; if he had
taken care.

Stains of Blood. 297

Thtiie was nothiug to attract attention, or excite alarm in this.
The robber, after paying his reckoning, sat silent and unnoticed in
his comer, and had almost dropped asleep, when he was half wakened
by the noisy entrance of a new-comer.

This was an antic fellow, half pedlar and half mountebank, who
travelled about the country on foot to vend hones, strops, razors,
washballs, harness-paste, medicine for dogs and horses, cheap per-
fumery, cosmetics, and such-like wares, which he carried in a case
slung to his back. His entrance was the signal for various homely
jokes with the countrymen, which slackened not until he had made
his supper, and opened his box of treasures, when he ingeniously
contrived to unite business with amusement.

" And what be that stoof '? Good to eat, Harry? " asked a grinning
countryman, pointing to some composition-cakes in one corner,

" This," said the fellow, producing one, " this is the infallible and
invaluable composition for i-emoviug all sorts of stain, rust, dirt,
mildew, spick, speck, spot, or spatter, from sUk, satin, linen, cambric,
cloth, crape, stuff, carpet, merino, muslin, bombazeen, or woollen
stuff. Wine-stains, fruit-stains, beer-stains, water-stains, paint-stains,
pitch-stains, any stains, all come out at one i-ub with the infallible
and invaluable composition. If a lady stains her honour, she has
only need to swallow one cake and she's cured at once — for it's
poison. If a gentleman wants to prove this, he has only need to bolt
one little square, and ho has put it beyond question — for it's quite as
satisfactory as a pistol-bullet, and a great deal nastier in the flavour,
consequently the more credit in taking it. One penny a square.
With all these virtues, one penny a square ! "

There were two buyers directly, and more of the listeners plainly
hesitated. The vendor observing this, increased in loquacity.

"It's all bought up as fast as it can be made," said the fellow.
" There are fourteen water-mills, six steam-engines, and a galvanic
battery, always a-working upon it, and they can't make it fast enough,
though the men work so hard that they die off, and the widows is
pensioned directly, with twenty pound a-year for each of the children,
and a premium of fifty for twins. One penny a square ! Two half-
pence is all the same, and four farthings is received with joy. One
penny a square ! Wine-stains, fruit-stains, beer-stains, water-stains,
paint-stains, pitch-stains, mud-stains, blood-stains ! Here is^ stain
upon the hat of a gentleman in company, that I'll take clean out,
before he can order me a pint of ale."

" Hah ! " cried Sikes starting up. " Give that back."

" I'll take it clean out, sir," replied the man, winking to the com-
pany, " before you can come across the room to get it. Gentlemen
all, observe the dark stain upon this gentleman's hat, no wider than a
shilling, but thicker than a half-crown. Whether it is a wine-stain,
fruit-stain, beer-stain, water-stain, paint-stain, pitch-stain, mud-stain,
or blood-stain • "

298 Oliver Twist,

The man got no further, for Sikcs with a hideous imprecation
overthrow the table, and tearing the hat from him, burst out of the
house.

With the same perversity of feeling and irresolution that had
fastened upon him, despite himself, all day, the murderer, finding
that he was not followed, and that they most probably considered him
some drunken sullen fellow, turned back up the town, and getting out
of the glare of the lamps of a stage-coach that was standing in tho
street, was walking past, when he recognised tho mail from London,
and saw that it was standing at the little post-office. He almost knew
what was to come ; but he crossed over, and listened.

The guard was standing at the door, waiting for the letter-bag. A
man, dressed like a gamekeeper, came up at the moment, and ho
handed him a basket which lay ready on the pavement.

" That's for your people," said the guard. " Now, look alive in
there, will you. Damn that 'ere bag, it warn't ready night afore last ;
this won't do, you know ! "

" Anything new up in town, Ben ? " asked the gamekeeper, drawing
back to the window-shutters, the better to admire the horses.

" No, nothing that I knows on," replied tho man, pulling on his
gloves. " Corn's up a little. I heerd talk of a murder, too, down
Spitalfields way, but I don't reckon much upon it."

" Oh, that's quite tme," said a gentleman inside, who was looking
out of the window. " And a dreadful murder it was."

" Was it, sir ? " rejoined the guard, touching his hat. " Man or
woman, pray, sir ? "

" A woman," replied the gentleman. " It is supposed '*

" Now, Ben," replied the coachman impatiently.

" Damn that 'ere bag," said the guard ; "are you gone to sleep in
there ? "

" Coming ! " cried the office keeper, running out.

" Coming," growled the guard. " Ah, and so's the young 'ooman
of property that's going to take a fancy to me, but I don't know when.
Here, give hold. All ri — ight ! "

Tho horn sounded a few cheerful notes, and the coach was gone.

Sikes remained standing in the street, apparently unmoved by what
he had just heard, and agitated by no stronger feeling than a doubt
where ^ go. At length he went back again, and took the road which
leads from Hatfield to St. Albans.

He went on doggedly ; but as he left the town behind him, and
plunged into the solitude and darkness of the road, he felt a dread
and awe creeping upon him which shook him to the core. Every
object before him, substance or shadow, still or moving, took the
semblance of some fearful thing ; but these fears were nothing com-
pared to the sense that haunted him of that morning's ghastly figure
following at his heels. He could trace its shadow in the gloom,
supply the smallest item of the outline, and note how stiflF and solemn

The Curse of Cain. 299

it seemed to stalk along. He could hear its gaiinents mstling in the
leaves, and every breath of wind camo laden with that last low cry.
If he stopped it did the same. If he ran, it followed — not running
too : that would have been a relief : but like a corpse endowed with
the mere machinery of life, and borne on one slow melancholy wind
that never rose or fell.

At times, he turned, with desperate determination, resolved to beat
this phantom off, though it should look him dead ; but the hair rose
on his head, and his blood stood still, for it had turned with him and
was behind him then. He had kept it before him that morning, but
it was behind now — always. Ho leaned his back against a bank, and
felt that it stood above him, visibly out against the cold night-sky.
Ho threw himself ui)on the road — on his back upon the road. At his
head it stood, silent, erect, and still — a living grave-stone, with its
epitaph in blood.

Let no man talk of murderers escaping justice, and hint that Pro-
vidence must sleep. There were twenty score of violent deaths in one
long minute of that agony of fear.

There was a shed in a field he passed, that offered shelter for the
night. Before the door, were three tall poplar trees, which made it
very dark within ; and the wind moaned through them with a dismal
wan. He conlA not walk on, till daylight came again ; and here he
stretched himself close to the wall — to undergo new torture.

For now, a vision came before him, as constant and more terrible
than that from which he had escaped. Those widely staring eyes, so
lustreless and so glassy, that he had better borne to see them than
think upon them, appeared in the midst of the darkness: light in
themselves, but giving light to nothing. There were but two, but
they were everywhere. If he shut out the sight, there came the room
with every well-known object — some, indeed, that he would have
forgotten, if he had gone over its contents from memory — each in its
accustomed place. The body was in its place, and its eyes were as he
saw them when he stole away. He got up, and rushed into the field
without. The figure was behind him. He re-entered the shed, and
shrunk down once more. The eyes were there, before he had laid
himself along.

And here he remained in such terror as none but he can know,
trembling in every limb, and the cold sweat starting from every pore,
when suddenly there arose upon the night-wind the noise of distant
shouting, and the roar of voices mingled in alarm and wonder. Any
sound of men in that lonely place, even though it conveyed a real
cause of alarm, was something to him. He regained his strength and
energy at the prospect of personal danger ; and springing to his feet,
rushed into the open air.

The broad sky seemed on fire. Eising into the air with showers
of sparks, and rolling one above the other, were sheets of flame,
lighting the atmosphere for miles round, and driving clouds of smoke

300 Oliver Twist.

in the direction where he stood. The shouts grew louder as new
voices swelled the roar, and he could hear the cry of Fire ! mingled
with the ringing of an alarm-bell, the fall of heavy bodies, and the
crackling of flames as they twined round some new obstacle, and shot
aloft as though refreshed by food. The noise increased as he looked.
There were people there — men and women — light, bustle. It was
like new life to him. He darted onward — straight, headlong — dashing
through brier and brake, and leaping gate and fence as madly as his
dog, who careered with loud and sounding bark before him.

He came upon the spot. There were half-dressed figures tearing
to and fro, some endeavouring to drag the frightened hoi'ses from the
stables, others driving the cattle from the yard and out-houses, and
others coming laden from the burning pile, amidst a shower of falling
sparks, and the tumbling down of red-hot beams. The apertures,
where doors and windows stood an hour ago, disclosed a mass of
raging fire ; walls I'ocked and crumbled into the burning well ; the
molten lead and ii'on poured down, white hot, upon the ground.
Women and children shrieked, and men encouraged each other with
noisy shouts and cheers. The clanking of the engine-pumps, and the
spirting and hissing of the water as it fell upon the blazing wood,
added to the tremendous roar. He shouted, too, till he was hoarse ;
and flying from memory and himself, plunged into the thickest of the
throng. Hither and thither he dived that night : now working at the
pumps, and now hurrying through the smoke and flame, but never
ceasing to engage himself wherever noise and men wore thickest. Up
and down the ladders, upon the roofs of buildings, over floors that
quaked and trembled with his weight, under the lee of falling bricks
and stones, in every part of that great fire was he ; but he bore a
charmed life, and had neither scratch nor bruise, nor weariness nor
thought, till morning dawned again, and only smoke and blackened
ruins remained.

This mad excitement over, there returned, with tenfold force, the
dreadful consciousness of his crime. He looked suspiciously about
him, for the men were conversing in groups, and he feared to be the
subject of their talk. The dog obeyed the significant beck of his
finger, and they drew ofi^, stealthily, together. He passed near an
engine where some men were seated, and they called to him to share
in their refreshment. He took some bread and meat ; and as he drank
a draught of beer, heard the firemen, who were from London, talking
about the murder. " He has gone to Bii-mingham, they say," said
one : " but they'll have him yet, for the scouts are out, and by to-
morrow night there'll be a cry all through the country."

He hurried off, and walked till he almost dropped upon the gi'ound ;
then lay down in a lane, and had a long, but broken and uneasy sleep.
He wandered on again, irresolute and undecided, and oppressed with
the fear of another solitary night.

Suddenly, he took the desperate resolution of goipg back to London,

^^feiM*-

o-^j&^ a,/^e//??A^^n^ ^4!:^/^^^ A^ <^^

Instinct? or what? 301

" There's somebody to speak to there, at all events," ho thought.
" A good hiding-place, too. They'll never expect to nab me there,
after this conntry scent. Why can't I lie by for a week or so, and,
forcing blunt from Fagin, get abroad to France? Damme, I'll
risk it."

He acted ujjon this impulse without delay, and choosing the least
frequented roads began his journey back, resolved to lie concealed
within a short distance of the metropolis, and, entering it at dusk by
a circuitous route, to proceed straight to that part of it which he had
fixed on for his destination.

The dog, though. If any descriptions of him were out, it would
not be forgotten that the dog was missing, and had probably gone
with him. This might lead to his apprehension as he passed along
the streets. He resolved to drown him, and walked on, looking about
for a pond : picking up a heavy stone and tying it to his handkerchief
as he went.

The animal looked up into his master's face while these prepara-
tions were making; whether his instinct apprehended something of
their purpose, or the robber's sidelong look at him was sterner than
ordinary, he skulked a little farther in the rear than usual, and
cowered as he came more slowly along. "When his master halted at
the brink of a pool, and looked round to call him, he stopped outright.

" Do you hear me call ? Come here ! " cried Sikes.

The animal came up from the very force of habit ; but as Sikes
stooped to attach the handkerchief to his throat, he uttered a low
gi'owl and started back.

" Come back ! " said the robber.

The dog wagged his tail, but moved not. Sikes made a running
noose and called him again.

The dog advanced, retreated, paused an instant, and scoured away
at his hardest speed.

The man whistled again and again, and sat down and waited in the
expectation that he would return. But no dog appeared, and at length
he resumed his journey.

CHAPTEE XLIX.

MONKS AND MR. BHOWNLOW AT LENGTH MEET. THEIR CONVERSATION,
AND THE INTELLIGENCE THAT INTERRUPTS IT.

The twilight was beginning to close in, when Mr. Brownlow alighted
from a hackney-coach at his own door, and knocked softly. The door
being opened, a sturdy man got out of the coach and stationed himself
on one side of the steps, while another man, who had be«) seated on

302 Oliver Twist.

the box, dismouuted too, and stood upon tbe other side. At a sign
from Mr. Brownlow, they helped ont a third man, and taking him
between them, hurried him into the house. This man was Monks.

They walked in the same manner up the stairs without speaking,
and Mr. Brownlow, preceding them, led the way into a back-room.
At the door of this apartment, Monks, who had ascended with evident
reluctance, stopped. The two men looked at the old gentleman as if
for instructions.

" He knows the alternative," said Mr. Brownlow. " If he hesitates
or moves a finger but as you bid him, drag him into the street, call
for the aid of the police, and impeach him as a felon in my name."

" How dare yon say this of me ? " asked Monks,

" How dare you nrge me to it, young man ? " replied Mr. Brownlow,
confronting him with a steady look. " Are you mad enough to leave
this house ? Unhand him. There, sir. You are free to go, and we
to follow. But I warn you, by all I hold most solemn and most
sacred, that the instant you set foot in the street, that instant will I
have you apprehended on a charge of fraud and robbery. I am
resolute and immoveable. If you are determined to be the same, your
blood be npon your own head ! "

"By what authority am I kidnapped in the street, and brought
here by these dogs ? " asked Monks, looking from one to the other of
the men who stood beside him.

•' By mine," replied Mr. Brownlow. " Those persons are indemnified
by me. If you complain of being deprived of your liberty — you had
power and opportunity to retrieve it as you came along, but you
deemed it advisable to remain quiet — I say again, throw yourself for
protection on the law. I will appeal to the law too ; but when you
have gone too far to recede, do not sue to me for leniency, when the
power will have passed into other hands ; and do not say I plunged
you down the gulf into which you rushed, youi'self."

Monks was plainly disconcerted, and alarmed besides. He hesitated,

" You will decide quickly," said Mr. Brownlow, with perfect firm-
ness and composure. " If you wish me to prefer ray charges publicly,
and consign you to a punishment the extent of which, although I can,
with a shudder, foresee, I cannot control, once more, I say, you know
the way. If not, and you appeal to my forbearance, and the mercy of
those you have deeply injured, seat yourself, without a word, in that
chair. It has waited for you two whole days."

Monks muttered some unintelligible words, but wavered still.

" You will be prompt," said Mr. Brownlow. " A word from me,
and the alternative has gone for ever."

Still the man hesitated.

" I have not the inclination to parley," said Mr. Brownlow, " and,
as I advocate the dearest interests of others, I have not the right."

" Is there — " demanded Monks with a faltering tongue, — " is there
—no middle course ? "

Monks at Bay, 303

« None."

Monks looked at the old gentleman, with an anxious eye; but,
reading in his countenance nothing but severity and determination,
walked into the room, and, shrugging his shoulders, sat down.

"Lock the door on the outside," said Mr. Brownlow to the
attendants, " and come when I ring."

The men obeyed, and the two were left alone together.

" This is pretty treatment, sir," said Monks, throwing down his hat
aiid cloak, " from my father's oldest friend."

" It is because I was y mr father's oldest friend, young man,"
returned Mr. Brownlow ; '' it is because the hopes and wishes of
young and happy years were bound up with him, and that fair creature
of his blood and kindred who rejoined her God in youth, and left me
hero a solitary, lonely man : it is because he knelt with me beside his
only sister's death-bed when he was yet a boy, on the morning that
would — but He.'wen willed otherwise — have made her my young wife ;
it is because my seared heart clung to him, from that time forth,
through all his trials and errors, till he died; it is because old
recollections and associations filled my heart, and even the sight of
you brings with it old thoughts of him ; it is because of all these
things that I am moved to treat you gently now — yes, Edward Leeford,
even now — and blush for your unworthiness who bear the name."

" What has the name to do with it ? " asked the other, after con-
templating, half in silence, and half in dogged wonder, the agitation
of his companion. " What is the name to me ? "

" Nothing," replied Mr. Brownlow, " nothing to you. But it was
liers, and even at this distance of time brings back to me, an old man,
the glow and thrill which I once felt, only to hear it repeated by a
stranger. I am very glad you have changed it — very — very."

" This is all mighty fine," said Monks (to retain his assumed
designation) after a long silence, during which he had jerked himself
in sullen defiance to and fro, and Mr. Brownlow had sat, shading his
face with his hand. " But what do you want with me ? "

"You have a brother," said Mr. Brownlow, rousing himself: "a
brother, the whisper of whose name in your ear when I came behind
you in the street, was, in itself, almost enough to make you accompany
me hither, in wonder and alarm."

" I have no brother," replied Monks. " You know I was an only
child. Why do you talk to me of brothers ? You know that, as well
as I."

" Attend to what I do know, and you may not," said Mr. Brownlow.
" I shall interest you by-and-by. I know that of the wretched
man-iagc, into which family pride, and the most sordid and narrowest
of all ambition, forced your unhappy father when a mere boy, you
M'ere the sole and most unnatural issue."

" I don't care for hard names," interrupted Monks with a jeering
laugh. " You know the fact, and that's enough for me."

304 Oliver Twist.

" But I also know," pursued the old gentleman, " the toisery, the
slow torture, the protracted anguish of that ill-assorted union. I
know how listlessly and wearily each of that wretched pair dragged
on their heavy chain through a world that was poisoned to them both.
I know how cold formalities were succeeded by open taunts ; how
indifference gave place to dislike, dislike to hate, and hate to loathing,
until at last they wrenched the clanking bond asunder, and retiring a
wide space apart, carried each a galling fragment, of which nothing
but death could break the rivets, to hide it in new society beneath the
gayest looks they could assume. Your mother succeeded ; she forgot
it soon. But it rusted and cankered at your father's heart for
years."

" Well, they were separated," said Monks, " and what of that ? "

"When they had been separated for some time," returned Mr.
Brownlow, " and your mother, wholly given up to continental frivolities,
had utterly forgotten the young husband ten good years her junior,
who, with prospects blighted, lingered on at home, he foil among new
friends. This circumstance, at least, you know already."

" Not I," said Monks, turning away his eyes and beating his foot
upon the ground, as a man who is determined to deny everything.
" Not I."

" Your manner, no less than your actions, assures me that you have
never forgotten it, or ceased to think of it with bitterness," returned
Mr. Brownlow. " I speak of fifteen years ago, when you were not
more than eleven years old, and your father but one-and-thirty — for
he was, I repeat, a boy, when Ms father ordered him to marry. Must
I go buck to events which cast a shade upon the memory of your
parent, or will you spare it, and disclose to me the truth ? "

" I have nothing to disclose," rejoined Monks. " You must talk on
if you will."

" These new friends, then," said Mr. Brownlow, " were a naval
officer retired from active service, whose wife had died some half-a-
year before, and left him with two children — there had been more,
b\it, of all their family, happily but two survived. They were both
daughters ; one a beautiful creature of nineteen, and the other a mere
child of two or three years old."

" What's this to me ? " asked Monks.

" They resided," said Mr. Brownlow, without seeming to hear the
interruption, "in a part of the country to which your father in his
wandering had repaired, and where he had taken up his abode.
Acquaintance, intimacy, friendship, fast followed on -each other. Your
father was gifted as few men are. He had his sister's soul and person.
As the old officer knew him more and more, he grew to love him. I
would that it had ended there. His daughter did the same."

The old gentleman paused; Monks was biting his lips, with his
eyes fixed upon the floor ; seeing this, he immediately resumed ;

" The end of a year found him conti*acted, solemnly contracted, to

Mr. Brozvnloiv tells a Tale. 305

that daughter ; the object of the first, true, ardent, only passion of a
guileless girl."

" Your tale is of the longest," observed Monks, moving restlessly
in his chair.

"It is a true tale of grief and trial, and sorrow, yonng man,"
returned Mr. Brownlow, " and snch tales usually are ; if it were one
of tinmixed joy and happiness, it would be very brief. At length one
of those rich relations to strengthen whose interest and importance
your father had been sacrificed, as others are often — it is no uncommon
case — died, and to repair the misery he had been instrumental
in occasioning, left him his panacea for all griefs — Money. It was
necessary that he should immediately repair to Eome, whither this
man had sped for health, and where he bad died, leaving his afiuirs
in great confusion. He went ; was seized with mortal illness there ;
was followed, the moment tlie intelligence reached Paris, by your
mother who carried you with her ; he died the day after her arrival,
leaving no will — no will — so that the whole property fell to her and
you."

At this part of the recital Monks held his breath, and listened with
a face of intense eagerness, though his eyes were not directed towards
the speaker. As Mr. Brownlow paused, he changed his position with
the air of one who has experienced a sudden relief, and wiped his hot
face and hands.

'• Before he went abroad, and as he passed through London on his
way," said Mr. Brownlow, slowly, and fixing his eyes upon the other's
face, " he came to me."

" I never heard of that," interrupted Monks in a tone intended to
appear incredulous, but savouring more of disagreeable surprise.

" He came to me, and left with me, among some other things, a
picture — a portrait painted by himself — a likeness of this poor girl —
which he did not wish to leave behind, and could not carry forward
on his hasty journey. He was worn by anxiety and remorse almost
to a shadow ; talked in a wild, distracted way, of ruin and dishonour
worked by himself; confided to me his intention to convert his whole
property, at any loss, into money, and, having settled on his wife and
you a portion of his recent acquisition, to fly the country — I guessed
too well he would not fly alone — and never see it more. Even from
me, his old and early friend, whose strong attachment had taken root
in the earth that covered one most dear to both — even from me he
withheld any more particular confession, promising to write and tell
me all, and after that to see me once again, for the last time on earth.
Alas ! That was the last time. I had no letter, and I never saw him
more.

" I went," said Mr. Brownlow, after a short pause, " I went, when
all was over, to the scene of his — I will use the term the world would
freely use, for worldly harshness or favour are now alike to him — of
his guilty love, resolved that if my fears were realised that erring

3o6 Oliver Tivtst.

child sboulJ find one heart and home to shelter" and compassionate
her. The family had left that part a week before ; they had called iu
Buch trifling debts as were outstanding, discharged them, and left the
place by night. Why, or whither, none can tell."

Monks drew his breath yet more freely, and looked i*ound mth a
smile of triumph.

" When your brother," said Mr. Brownlow, drawing nearer to tho
other's chaii-, " When your brother : a feeble, ragged, neglected child :
was cast in my way by a stronger hand than chance, and rescued by
mo from a life of vice and infamy "

"What?" cried Monks.

" By me," said Mr. Brownlow. " I told you I should intei'est you
before long. I say by me — I see that your cunning associate sup-
pressed my name, although for aught ho knew, it wculd be quite
strange to your ears. When he was rescued by me, then, and lay
recovering from sickness in my house, his strong resemblance to this
picture I have spoken of, struck me with astonishment. Even when
I first saw him in all his dirt and misery, there was a lingering
expression in his face that came upon me like a glimpse of some old
friend flashing on one in a vivid dream. I need not tell you ho was
snared away before I knew his history "

" Why not ? " asked Monks hastily.

" Because you know it well."

" I ! "

"Denial to me is vain," replied Mr. Brownlow. "I shall show
you that I know more than that."

" You — you — can't prove anything against me," stammered Monks.
" I defy you to do it ! "

" We shall see," returned the old gentleman with a searching glance.
" I lost the boy, and no efforts of mine could recover him. Your
mother being dead, I knew that you alone could solve the mystery if
anybody could, and as when I had last heard of you you were on your
own estate in the West Indies — whither, as you well know, you retii'ed
upon your mother's death to escape the consequences of vicious courses
here — I made the voyage. You had left it, months before, and were
supposed to be in London, but no one could tell where. I returned.
Your agents had no clue to your residence. You came and went,
they said, as strangely as you had ever done : sometimes for days
together and sometimes not for months : keeping to all appearance
the same low haunts and mingling with the same infamous herd who
had been your associates when a fierce ungovernable boy. I wearied
them with new applications. I paced the streets by night and day,
but until two houi's ago, all my efforts were fruitless, and I never saw
you for an instant."

" And now you do see me," said Monks, rising boldly, " what then ?
Fraud aud robbery are high-sounding words — ^justified, you think, by
a fancied resemblance in some young imp to an idle daub of a dead

The Tale is highly Effective. 307

man's Brother ! Yon don't even know that a child was born of this
maudlin pair ; yon don't even know that."

" I AxA not" replied Mr. Brownlow, rising too ; " but within the last
fortnight I have learnt it all. You have a brother ; you know it, and
him. There was a will, which your mother destroyed, leaving the
secret and the gain to you at her own death. It contained a reference
to some child likely to be the result of this sad connection, which
child was born, and accidentally encountered by you, when your
suspicions were first awakened by his resemblance to your father.
You repaii-ed to the place of his birth. There existed proofs — proofs
long suppressed — of his birth and parentage. Those proofs were
destroyed by you, and now, in youi* own words to your accomplice the
Jew, ' the only proofs of the hoy's identity lie at the hottom of the river,
and the old hag that received them from the mother is rotting in her
coffin.' Unworthy son, coward, liar, — you, who hold your councils
with thieves and murderers in dark rooms at night, — you, whose plots
and wiles have brought a violent death upon the head of one worth
millions such as you, — you, who from your cradle were gall and
bitterness to your own father's heart, and in whom all evil passions,
vice, and profligacy, festered, till they found a vent in a hideous
disease which has made your face an index even to your mind — you,
Edward Leeford, do you still brave me ! "

" No, no, no ! " returned the coward, overwhelmed by these accumu-
lated charges.

" Every word I " cried the old gentleman, " every word that has
passed between you and this detested villain, is known to me. Shadows
on the wall have caught your whispers, and brought them to my ear ;
the sight of the persecuted child has turned vice itself, and given it
the courage and almost the attributes of virtue. Murder has been
done, to which you were morally if not really a party."

" No, no," interposed Monks. " I — I know nothing of that ; I was
going to inquire the truth of the story when you overtook me. I
didn't know the cause. I thought it was a common quarrel."

" It was the partial disclosure of your secrets," replied Mr. Brown-
low. " Will yon disclose the whole ? "

« Yes, I wiU."

"Set your hand to a statement of truth and facts, and repeat it
before witnesses ? "

" That I promise too."

"Remain quietly here, until such a document is drawn up, and
proceed with me to such a place as I may deem most advisable, for
the purpose of attesting it ? "

" If you insist upon that, I'll do that also," replied Monks.

"You must do more than that," said Mr. Brownlow. "Make
restitution to an innocent and unoffending child, for such he is,
although the offspring of a guilty and most miserable love. You have
not forgotten the provisions of the will. Carry them into execution

308 Oliver Twist.

BO far as your bi'other is concerned, and then go where yon please.
In this world you need meet no more."

While Monks was pacing np and down, meditating with dark and
evil looks on this proposal and the possibilities of evading it : torn
by his fears on the one hand and his hatred on the other : the door
was hurriedly unlocked, and a gentleman (Mr. Losberne) entered the
room in violent agitation.

" The man will be taken," he cried. " He will be taken to-night ! "

" The murderer ? " asked Mr. Brownlow.

" Yes, yes," replied the other. " His dog has been seen lurking
about some old haunt, and there seems little doubt that his master
either is, or will be, there, under cover of the darkness. Spies are
hovering about in every direction. I have spoken to the men who
are charged with his capture, and they tell me he cannot escape. A
reward of a hundred pounds is proclaimed by Government to-night."

" I will give fifty more," said Mr. Brownlow, " and proclaim it with
my own lips upon the spot, if I can reach it. Where is Mr. Maylie ? "

" Harry ? As soon as he had seen your friend here, safe in a coach
with you, he hurried off to where he heard this," replied the doctor,
•' and mounting his horse sallied forth to join the first party at some
place in the outskirts agreed upon between them."

" Fagin," said Mr. Brownlow ; " what of him ? "

" When I last heard, he had not been taken, but he will be, or is,
by this time. They're sure of him."

" Have you made np your mind ? " asked Mr. Brownlow, in a low
voice, of Monks.

" Yes," he replied. " You — you — will bo secret with me ? "

" I will. Remain here till I return. It is your only hope of
safety."

They left the room, and the door was again locked.

" What have you done ? " asked the doctor in a whisper.

" All that I could hope to do, and even more. Coupling the poor
girl's intelligence with my previous knowledge, and the result of our
good friend's inquiries on the spot, I left him no loophole of escape,
and laid bare the whole villainy which by these lights became plain
as day. Write and appoint the evening after to-morrow, at seven, for
the meeting. We shall be down there, a few hours before, but shall
require rest : especially the young lady, who maxj have greater need of
firmness than either you or I can quite foresee just now. But my
blood boils to avenge this poor murdered creature. Which way have
they taken ? "

" Drive straight to the office and you will bo in time," replied Mr.
Losberne. " I will remain here."

The two gentlemen hastily separated ; each in a fever of excitement
wholly uncontrollable.

CHAPTER L.

THE PUBSniT AND ESCAPE.

Near to that part of the Thames on which the church at Rotherhithe
abuts, where the buildings on the banks are dirtiest and the vessels
on the river blackest with the dust of colliers and the smoke of close-
built low-roofed houses, there exists the filthiest, the strangest, the
most extraordinary of the many localities that are hidden in London,
wholly unknown, even by name, to the great mass of its inhabitants.

To reach this place, the visitor has to penetrate through a maze of
close, narrow, and muddy streets, thronged by the roughest and
poorest of waterside people, and devoted to the traffic they may bo
supposed to occasion. The cheapest and least delicate provisions ai-e
heaped in the shops ; the coarsest and commonest articles of wearing
apparel dangle at the salesman's door, and stream from the house-
parapet and windows. Jostling with unemployed labourers of the
lowest class, ballast-heavers, coal-whippers, brazen women, ragged
children, and the raff and refuse of the river, he makes his way with
difficulty along, assailed by offensive sights and smells from the
narrow alleys which branch off on the right and left, and deafened by
the clash of ponderous waggons that bear great piles of merchandise
from the stacks of warehouses that rise from every corner. Arriving,
at length, in streets remoter and less-frequented than those through
which he has passed, he walks beneath tottering house-fronts project-
ing over the pavement, dismantled walls that seem to totter as he
passes, chimneys half crushed half hesitating to fall, windows guarded
by rusty iron bars that time and dirt have almost eaten away, every
imaginable sign of desolation and neglect.

In such a neighbomhood, beyond Dockhead in the Borough of
Southwark, stands Jacob's Island, surrounded by a muddy ditch, six or
eight feet deep and fifteen or twenty ^vide when the tide is in, ohce
called Mill Pond, but known in the days of this story as Folly Ditch.
It is a creek or inlet from the Thames, and can always be filled at
high water by opening the sluices at the Lead Mills from which it
took its old name. At such times, a stranger, looking from one of the
wooden bridges thrown across it at Mill Lane, will see the inhabitants
of the houses on either side lowering from their back doors and
windows, buckets, pails, domestic utensils of all kinds, in which to
haul the water up ; and when his eye is turned from these operations
to the houses themselves, his utmost astonishment will be excited by
the scene before him. Crazy wooden galleries common to the backs
of half-a-dozen houses, with holes from which to look upon the slimo
beneath ; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out, on
which to dry the linen that is never there ; rooms so small, so filthy,

310 Oliver Tavist.

so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt and
squalor which they shelter ; wooden chambers thrusting themselves
out above the mud, and threatening to fall into it — as some have
done ; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations ; every repulsive
lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and
garbage ; all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch.

In Jacob's Island, the warehouses are roofless and empty ; the walls
are crumbling down ; the windows are windows no more ; the doors
are falling into the streets ; the chimneys are blackened, but they
yield no smoke. Thirty or forty years ago, before losses and chancery
suits came upon it, it was a thriving place ; but now it is a desolate
island indeed. The houses have no owners ; they are broken open,
and entered upon by those who have the courage ; and there they live,
and there they die. They must have powerful motives for a secret
residence, or be reduced to a destitute condition indeed, who seek a
refuge in Jacob's Island.

In an upper room of one of these houses — a detached house of fair
size, ruinous in other respects, but strongly defended at door and
window : of which house the back commanded the ditch in manner
already described — there were assembled three men, who, regarding
each other every now and then with looks expressive of perplexity
and expectation, sat for some time in profound and gloomy silence.
One of these was Toby Crackit, another Mr. Chitling, and the third a
robber of fifty years, whose nose had been almost beaten in, in some
old scuffle, and whose face bore a frightful scar which might probably
be traced to the same occasion. This man was a returned transport,
and his name was Kags.

" I Avish," said Toby turning to Mr. Chitling, *' that you had picked
out some other crib when the two old ones got too warm, and had not
come here, ray fine feller."

" Why didn't you, blunder-head ! " said Kags.

" Well, I thought you'd have been a little more glad to see me than
this," replied Mr. Chitling, with a melancholy air.

" Why look'e, young gentleman," said Toby, " when a man keeps
himself so very ex-clusive as I have done, and by that means has a
snug house over his head with nobody a prying and smelling about it,
it's rather a startling thing to have the honour of a wisit from a young
gentleman (however respectable and pleasant a person he may be to
play cards with at conweniency) circnmstanced as you are."

" Especially, when the exclusive young man has got a friend stop-
ping with him, that's arrived sooner than was expected from foreign
parts, and is too modest to want to be presented to the Judges on his
return," added Mi\ Kags.

There was a short silence, after which Toby Crackit, seeming to
abandon as hopeless any further efibrt to maintain his usual devil-
may-care swagger, turned to Chitling and said,

*' When was Fagin took then ? "

Sikes's Dog. 311

"Just at dinner-time— two o'clock this afternoon. Charley and I
made our lucky up the wash'us chimney, and Bolter got into the
empty water-butt, head downwards; but his legs were so precious
long that they stuck out at the top, and so they took him too."

"And Bet?"

" Poor Bet ! She went to see the Body, to speak to who it was,"
replied Chitling, his countenance falling more and more, " and went
off mad, screaming and raving, and beating her head against the
boards; so they put a strait-weskut on her and took her to the
hospital — and there she is."

" Wot's come of young Bates ? " demanded Kags.

" He hung about, not to come over here afore dark, but he'll bo
here soon," replied Chitling. " There's nowhere else to go to now,
for the people at the Cripples are all in custody, and the bar of the
ken — I went up there and see it with my own eyes— is filled with
traps."

" This is a smash," observed Toby biting his lips. " There's more
than one will go with this."

" The sessions are on," said Kags : " if they get the inquest over,
and Bolter turns King's evidence : as of course he will, from what
he's said already : they can prove Fagin an accessory before the fact,
and get the trial on on Friday, and he'll swing in six days from this,
byG-1"

" You should have heard the people groan," said Chitling ; " the
officers fought like devils, or they'd have torn him away. He was
down once, but they made a ring round him, and fought their way
along. You should have seen how he looked about him, all muddy
and bleeding, and clung to them as if they were his dearest friends.
I can see 'em now, not able to stand upright with the pressing of the
mob, and dragging him along amongst 'em ; I can see the people
jumping up, one behind another, and snai'ling with their teeth and
making at him ; 1 can see the blood upon his hair and beard, and
hear the cries with which the women worked themselves into the
centre of the crowd at the street corner, and swore they'd tear his
heart out ! "

The horror-stricken witness of this scene pressed his hands upon
his ears, and with his eyes closed got up and paced violently to and
fro, like one distracted.

"While he was thus engaged, and the two men sat by in silence with
their eyes fixed upon the floor, a pattering noise was heard upon the
stairs, and Sikes's dog bounded into the room. They ran to the
window, down-stairs, and into the street. The dog had jumped in at
an open window ; he made no attempt to follow them, nor was his
master to be seen.

"What's the meaning of this?" said Toby when they had returned.
" He can't be coming here. I — I — hope not."

" If he was coming hero, he'd have come with the dog," saic? Kags,

SI2 Olii)er Twist.

stooping Aovnx to examine the animal, who lay panting on the floor.
" Here ! Give us some water for him ; he has run himself faint."

" He's drunk it all up, every drop," said Chitling after watching
the dog some time in silence. " Covered with mud — lame — half-
blind — he must have come a long way."

" Where can he have come from ! " exclaimed Toby. " He's been
to the other kens of course, and finding them filled with strangers
come on here, where he's been many a time and often. But where
can he have come from first, and how comes he here alone without
the other ! "

" He " — (none of them called the murderer by his old name) — " He
can't have made away with himself. What do you think ? " said
Chitling.

Toby shook his head.

" If he had," said Kags, " the dog 'ud want to lead us away to where
he did it. No. I think he's got out of the country, and left the dog
behind. He must have given him the slip somehow, or he wouldn't
be so easy."

This solution, appearing the most probable one, was adopted as the
right ; the dog, creeping under a chair, coiled himself up to sleep,
without more notice from anybody.

It being now dark, the shutter was closed, and a candle lighted
and placed upon the table. The terrible events of the last two days
had made a deep impression on all three, increased by the danger and
uncertainty of their own position. They drew their chairs closer
together, starting at every sound. They spoke little, and that in
whispers, and were as silent and awe-stricken as if the remains of the
murdered woman lay in the next room.

They had sat thus, some time, when suddenly was heard a hurried
knocking at the door below.

" Young Bates," said Kags, looking angrily round, to check the fear
he felt himself.

The knocking came again. No, it wasn't he. He never knocked
like that.

Crackit went to the window, and shaking all over, drew in his head.
There was no need to tell them who it was ; his pale face was enough.
Tie dog too was on the alert in an instant, and ran whining to the door.

" We must let him in," he said, taking up the candle.

" Isn't there any help for it ? " asked the other man in a hoarse
voice.

" None. He must come in."

" Don't leave us in the dark," said Kags, taking down a candle fi'om
the chimney-piece, and lighting it, with such a trembling hand that
the knocking was twice repeated before he had finished.

Crackit went down to the door, and returned followed by a man
with the lower part of his face buried in a handkerchief, and another
tied over his head under his hat. He drew them slowly off. Blanched

TJie Red Foot at the Door. 313

face, sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, beard of three days' growth, wasted
flesh, short thick breath ; it was the very ghost of Sikes.

He laid his hand upon a chair which stood iu the middle of the
room, bnt shuddering as he was about to drop into it, and seeming to
glance over his shoulder, dragged it back close to the wall — as close
as it would go — ground it against it — and sat down.

Not a word had been exchanged. He looked from one to another
in silence. If an eye were furtively raised and met his, it was
instantly averted. When his hollow voice broke silence, they all
three started. They seemed never to have heard its tones before.

" How came that dog here ? " he asked.

" Alone. Three hours ago."

" To-night's paper says that Fagin's took. Is it true, or a lie ? "

" True."

They were silent again.

" Damn you all ! " said Sikes, passing his hand across his forehead.
" Have you nothing to say to me ? "

There was an uneasy movement among them, but nobody spoke.

"You that keep this house," said Sikes, turning his face to
Crackit, " do you mean to sell me, or to let me lie here till this hunt
is over ? "

"You may stop here, if you think it safe," returned the person
addressed, after some hesitation.

Sikes carried his eyes slowly up the wall behind him : rather trying
to tui-n his head than actually doing it: and said, "Is — it— the body
—is it buried ? "

They shook their heads.

" Why isn't it ! " he retorted with the same glance behind him.
" Wot do they keep such ugly things above the ground for ? — Who's
that knocking ? "

Crackit intimated, by a motion of his hand as he left the room, that
there was nothing to fear ; and dii-ectly came back with Charley Bates
behind him. Sikes sat opposite the door, so that the moment the boy
entered the room he encountered his figure.

" Toby," said the boy falling back, as Sikes turned his eyes towards
him, " why didn't you tell me this, down-staii's ? "

There had been something so tremendous in the shrinking off of
the three, that the wretched man was willing to propitiate even this
lad. Accordingly he nodded, and made as though he would shake
hands with him.

" Let me go into some other room," said the boy, retreating still
farther.

" Charley ! " said Sikes, stepping forward. " Don't you — don't you
know me ? "

•' Don't come nearer me," answered the boy, still retreating, and
looking, with horror in his eyes, upon the murderer's ftwe. " You
monster I "

314 Oliver Twist.

Tho man stopped half-way, and they looked at each other; but
Sikes's eyes sunk gradually to the ground.

" Witness you three," cried the boy shaking his clenched fist, and
becoming more and more excited as he spoke. " Witness you three —
I'm not afraid of him — if they come here after him, I'll give him up ;
I will. I tell you out at once. He may kill me for it if he likes, or if
he dares, but if I am here I'll give him up. I'd give him up if ho was
to be boiled alive. Murder ! Help ! If there's the pluck of a man
among you three, you'll help me. Murder ! Help ! Down with him ! "

Pouring out these cries, and accompanying them with violent
gesticulation, the boy actually threw himself, single-handed, upon the
strong man, and in the intensity of his energy and the suddenness of
his surprise, brought him heavily to the ground.

The three spectators seemed quite stupefied. They offered no
interference, and the boy and man rolled on tho ground together ; the
former, heedless of the blows that showered upon him, wrenching his
hands tighter and tighter in the garments about the murderer's breast,
and never ceasing to call for help with all his might.

The contest, however, was too unequal to last long. Sikes had him
down, and his knee was on his throat, when Crackit pulled him back
with a look of alarm, and pointed to the window. There were lights
gleaming below, voices in loud and earnest conversation, the tramp of
hurried footsteps — endless they seemed in number — crossing the
nearest wooden bridge. One man on horseback seemed to be among
the crowd ; for there was the noise of hoofs rattling on the uneven
pavement. The gleam of lights increased ; the footsteps came more
thickly and noisily on. Then, came a loud knocking at the door, and
then a hoarse murmur from such a multitude of angry voices as would
have made the boldest quail.

"Help!" shrieked the boy in a voice that rent the air. "He's
here ! Break down the door ! "

" In the King's name," cried the voices without \ and the hoarse
cry arose again, but louder.

" Break down the door ! " screamed the boy. " I tell you they'll
never open it. Eun straight to the room where the light is. Break
down the door ! "

Strokes, thick and heavy, rattled upon the door and lower window-
shutters as he ceased to speak, and a loud huzzah burst from the
crowd ; giving the listener, for the first time, some adequate idea of
its immense extent.

" Open the door of some place where I can lock this screeching
Hell-babe," cried Sikes fiercely ; running to and fro, and dragging the
boy, now, as easily as if he were an. empty sack. " That door.
Quick ! " He flung him in, bolted it, and turned the key. " Is the
down-stairs door fast ? "

" Double-locked and chained," replied Crackit, who, with the other
two men, still remained quite helpless and bewildered.

The Wild Beast hemmed in, 315

"The panels — are they strong? *'

" Lined with sheet-iron."

" And the windows too ? "

" Yes, and the windows."

" Damn yon ! " cried the desperate mffian, throwing up the sash and
menacing the crowd. " Do your worst ! I'll cheat you yet ! "

Of all the terrific yells that ever fell on mortal ears, none could
exceed the cry of the infuriated throng. Some shouted to those who
were nearest to set the house on fire ; others roared to the ofiicers to
shoot him dead. Among them all, none showed such fury as the man
on horseback, who, throwing himself out of the saddle, and bursting
through the crowd as if he were parting water, cried, beneath the
window, in a voice that rose above all others, " Twenty guineas to the
man who biings a ladder ! "

The nearest voices took up the' cry, and hundreds echoed it. Some
called for ladders, some for sledge-hammers ; some ran with torches
to and fro as if to seek them, and still came back and roared again ;
some spent their breath in impotent curses and execrations ; some
pressed forward with the ecstasy of madmen, and thus impeded the
progress of those below ; some among the boldest attempted to climb
up by the water-spout and crevices in the wall ; and all waved to and
fro, in the darkness beneath, like a field of corn moved by an angry
wind : and joined from time to time in one loud furious roar.

*' The tide," cried the murderer, as he staggered back into the room,
and shut the faces out, " the tide was in as I came up. Give me a
rope, a long rope. They're all in front. I may drop into the Folly
Ditch, and clear off that way. Give me a rope, or I shall do three
more murders and kill myself."

The panic-stricken men pointed to where such articles were kept ;
the murderer, hastily selecting the longest and strongest cord, hurried
up to the house-top.

All the windows in the rear of the house had been long ago bricked
up, except one small trap in the room where the boy was locked, and
that was too small even for the passage of his body. But, from this
aperture, he had never ceased to call on those without, to guard the
back ; and thus, when the murderer emerged at last on the house-top
by the door in the roof, a loud shout proclaimed the fact to those in
front, who immediately began to pour round, pressing upon each other
in an unbroken stream.

He planted a board, which he had carried up with him for the
purpose, so firmly against the door that it must be matter of great
difficulty to open it from the inside; and creeping over the tiles,
looked over the low parapet.

The water was out, and the ditch a bed of mud.

The crowd had been liushed during these few moments, watching
his motions and doubtful of his purpose, but the instant they perceived
it and knew it was defeated, they raised a cry of triumphant execration

3i6 Oliver Twist.

to which all their previous shouting had been whispers. Again and
again it rose. Those who were at too great a distance to know its
meaning, took up the sound ; it echoed and re-echoed ; it seemed as
though the whole city had poured its population out to curse him.

On pressed the people from the front — on, on, on, in a strong
struggling current of angry faces, with here and there a glaring torch
to lighten them up, and show them out in all their wrath and passion.
The houses on the opposite side of the ditch had been entered by the
mob ; sashes were thrown up, or torn bodily out ; there were tiers and
tiers of faces in every window ; cluster upon cluster of people clinging
to every house-top. Each little bridge (and there were three in sight)
bent beneath the weight of the crowd upon it. Still the current
poured on to find some nook or hole from which to vent their shouts,
and only for an instant see the wretch.

"They have him now," cried a man on the nearest bridge.
" Plurrah ! "

The crowd grew light with uncovered heads ; and again the shout
uprose.

" I will give fifty pounds," cried an old gentleman from the same
quarter, " to the man who takes him alive. I will remain here, till he
comes to ask me for it."

There was another roar. At this moment the word was passed
among the crowd that the door was forced at last, and that he who had
first called for the ladder had mounted into the room. The stream
abruptly turned, as this intelligence ran from mouth to mouth ; and
the people at the windows, seeing those upon the bridges pouring back,
quitted their stations, and running into the street, joined the concourse
that now thronged pell-mell to the spot they had left: each man
crushing and striving with his neighbour, and all panting with
impatience to get near the door, and look upon the criminal as the
officers brought him out. The cries and shrieks of those who were
pressed almost to suffocation, or trampled down and trodden under
foot in the confusion, were dreadful ; the narrow ways were com-
pletely blocked up ; and at this time, between the rush of some to
regain the space in front of the house, and the unavailing struggles of
others to extricate themselves from the mass, the immediate attention
was distracted from the murderer, although the universal eagerness
for his capture was, if possible, increased.

The man had shrunk down, thoroughly quelled by the ferocity of
the crowd, and the impossibility of escape; but seeing this sudden
change with no less rapidity than it had occurred, he sprang upon his
feet, determined to make one last effort for his life by dropping into
the ditch, and, at the risk of being stifled, endeavouring to creep away
in the darkness and confusion.

Roused into new strength and energy, and stimulated by the noise
within the house which announced that an entrance had really been
effected, he set his foot against the stack of chimneys, fastened one

-^^^^^yUr^-Zy f^^.4^y?7^Y^

The Wild Beast laid low. 317

end of tlie rope tightly and firmly ronnd it, and with the other made
ft strong running noose by the aid of his hands and teeth almost in a
second. He could let himself down by the cord to within a less
distance of the ground than his own height, and had his knife ready
in his hand to cut it then and drop.

At the very instant when ho brought the loop over his head previous
to slipping it beneath his arm-pits, and when the old gentleman
before-mentioned (who had clung so tight to the railing of the bridge
as to resist the force of the crowd, and retain his position) earnestly
warned those about him that the man was about to lower himself
down — at that very instant the murderer, looking behind him on the
roof, threw his arms above his head, and uttered a yell of terror.

" The eyes again ! " he cried in an unearthly screech.

Staggering as if struck by lightning, he lost his balance and tumbled
over the parapet. The noose was on his neck. It ran up with his
weight, tight as a bow-string, and swift as the arrow it speeds. He
fell for five-and-thirty feet. There was a sudden jerk, a terrific con-
vulsion of the limbs ; and there he hung, with the open knife clenched
in his stiffening hand.

The old chimney quivered with the shock, but stood it bravely.
The murderer swung lifeless against the wall ; and the boy, thrusting
aside the dangling body which obscured his view, called to the people
to come and take him out, for God's sake.

A dog, which had lain concealed till now, ran backwards and
forwards on the parapet with a dismal howl, and collecting himself
for a spring, jumped for the dead man's shoulders. Missing his aim,
ho fell into the ditch, turning completely over as he went; and
striking his head against a stone, dashed out his brains.

CHAPTER LI.

AFTOBDTNG AN EXPLANATION OP MORE MYSTERIES THAN ONE, AND COM-
PREHENDING A PROPOSAL OP MARRIAGE WITH NO WORD OP SETTLE-
MENT OR PIN-MONEY.

The events narrated in the last chapter were yet but two days old,
when Oliver found himself, at three o'clock in the afternoon, in a
travelling-carriage rolling fast towards his native town. Mrs. Maylie,
and Rose, and Mrs. Bedwin, and the good doctor, were with him : and
Mr. Brownlow followed in a post-chaise, accompanied by one other
person whose name had not been mentioned.

They had not talked much upon the way ; for Oliver was in a flutter
of agitation and uncertainty which deprived him of the power of
collecting his thoughts, and almost of speech, and appeared to have

3i8 Oliver Twist.

scarcely less eflfect on his companions, who shared it, in at least an
equal degree. He and the two ladies had been very carefully made
acquainted by Mr. Brownlow with the nature of the admissions which
had been forced from Monks ; and although they knew that the object
of their present journey was to complete the work which had been so
well begun, still the whole matter was enveloped in enough of doubt
and mystery to leave them in endurance of the most intense suspense.

The same kind fi-iend had, with Mr. Losberne's assistance, cautiously
stopped all channels of communication through which they could
receive intelligence of the dreadful occurrences that had so recently
taken place. " It was quite true," ho said, " that they must know
them before long, but it might be at a better time than the present,
and it could not be at a worse." So, they travelled on in silence : each
busied with reflections on the object which had brought them together :
and no one disposed to give utterance to the thoughts which crowded
upon all.

But if Oliver, under these influences, had remained silent while
they journeyed towards his birth-place by a road he had never seen,
how the whole current of his recollections ran back to old times, and
what a crowd of emotions were wakened up in his breast, when they
turned into that which he had traversed on foot : a poor houseless,
wandering boy, without a friend to help him, or a roof to shelter his
head.

" See there, there ! " cried Oliver, eagerly clasping the hand of
Eose, and pointing out at the carriage window ; " that's the stile I
came over ; thei*e are the hedges I crept behind, for fear anyone
should overtake me and force me back ! Yonder is the path across
the fields, leading to the old house where I was a little child ! Oh
Dick, Dick, my dear old friend, if I could only see you now ! "

" You will see him soon," replied Rose, gently taking his folded
hands between her own. " You shall tell him how happy you are,
and how rich you have grown, and that in all your happiness you
have none so great as the coming back to make him happy too."

" Yes, yes," said Oliver, " and we'll — we'll take him away from
here, and have him clothed and taught, and send him to some quiet
country place where he may grov/ strong and well, — shall we ? "

Eose nodded " yes," for the boy was smiling through such happy
tears that she could not speak.

" You will be kind and good to him, for you are to everyone," said
Oliver. " It will make you cry, I know, to hear what he can tell ;
but never mind, never mind, it will be all over, and you will smile
again — I know that too — to think how changed he is ; you did the
same with me. He said ' God bless you ' to me when I ran away,"
cried the boy with a burst of affectionate emotion ; " and I will say
' God bless yon ' now, and show him how I love him for it ! "

As they approached the town, and at length drove through its
narrow streets, it became matter of no small difficulty to restrain the

Oliver revisits his Birth-place, 319

boy withiu reasonable bounds. There was Sowerberry's the under-
taker's just as it nsed to be, only smaller and less imposing in appear-
ance than he remembered it — there were all the well-known shops
and houses, with almost every one of which he had some slight incident
connected — there was Gamfield's cart, the very cart he used to have,
standing at the old public-house door — there was the workhouse, the
dreary prison of his youthful days, with its dismal windows frowning
on the street — there was the same lean porter standing at the gate, at
sight of whom Oliver involuntarily shrunk back, and then laughed at
himseK for being so foolish, then cried, then laughed again — there
were scores of faces at the doors and windows that he knew quite
well — there was nearly everything as if he had left it but yesterday,
and all his recent life had been but a happy dream.

But it was pure, earnest, joyful reality. They drove straight to
the door of the chief hotel (which Oliver used to stare up at, with awe,
and think a mighty palace, but which had somehow fallen off in
grandeur and size) ; and here was Mr. Grimwig all ready to receive
them, kissing the young lady, and the old one too, when they got out
of the coach, as if he were the gi-andfather of the whole party, all
smiles and kindness, and not offering to eat his head — no, not once ;
not even when he contradicted a very old postboy about the nearest
road to London, and maintained he knew it best, though he had only
come that way once, and that time fast asleep. There was dinner
prepared, and there were bedrooms ready, and everything was
arranged as if by magic.

Notwithstanding all this, when the hurry of the first balf-hour was
over, the same silence and constraint prevailed that had marked their
journey down. Mr. Brownlow did not join them at dinner, but
remained in a separate room. The two other gentlemen hurried in
and out with anxious faces, and, during the short intervals when they
were present, converaed apart. Once, Mrs. Maylie was called away,
and after being absent for nearly an hour, returned with eyes swollen
with weeping. All these things made Rose and Oliver, who were not
in any new secrets, nervous and uncomfortable. They sat wondering,
in silence ; or, if they exchanged a few words, spoke in whispers, as
if they were afraid to hear the sound of their own voices.

At length, when nine o'clock had come, and they began to think
they were to hear no more that night, Mr. Losberne and Mr. Grimwig
entered the room, followed by Mr. Brownlow and a man whom Oliver
almost shrieked with surprise to see ; for they told him it was his
brother, and it was the same man he had met at the market-town, and
seen looking in with Fagin at the window of his little room. Monks
cast a look of hate, which, even then, he could not dissemble, at the
astonished boy, and sat down near tlie door. Mr. Brownlow, who had
papere in his hand, walked to a table near which Rose and Oliver
were seated.

" This is a painful task," said he, " but these declarations, which

320 Oliver Twist.

have been signed in London before many gentlemen, must be in
substance repeated here. I would have spared yon the degradation,
bnt we mnst hear them from your own lips before we part, and you
know why."

" Go on," said the person addressed, turning away his face. " Quick.
I have almost done enough, I think. Don't keep me here."

" This child," said Mr. Brownlow, drawing Oliver to him. and
laying his hand upon his head, " is your half-brother ; the illegitimate
son of your father, my dear friend Edwin Leeford, by poor young
Agnes Fleming, who died in giving him birth."

" Yes," said Monks, scowling at the trembling boy : the beating of
whose heart he might have heard. " That is their bastard child."

" The term you use," said Mr. Brownlow, sternly, " is a reproach to
those who long since passed beyond the feeble censure of the world.
It reflects disgrace on no one living, except you who use it. Let that
pass. He was born in this town."

" In the workhouse of this town," was the sullen reply. " You have
the story there." He pointed impatiently to the papers as he spoke.

" I must have it here, too," said Mr. Bro^^'nlow, looking round upon
the listeners.

" Listen then ! You ! " returned Monks. " His father being taken
ill at Rome, was joined by his wife, my mother, from whom he had
been long separated, who went from Paris and took me with her — to
look after his property, for what I know, for she had no great affection
for him, nor he for her. He knew nothing of us, for his senses were
gone, and he slumbered on till next day, when he died. Among the
papers in his desk, were two, dated on the night his illness first came
on, directed to yourself ; " he addressed himself to Mr. Brownlow ; " and
enclosed in a few short lines to you, with an intimation on the cover
of the package that it was not to be forwarded till after he was dead.
One of these papers was a letter to this girl Agnes ; the other a
will."

" What of the letter ? " asked Mr. Brownlow.

" The letter ? — A sheet of paper crossed and crossed again, with a
penitent confession, and prayers to God to help her. He had palmed
a tale on the girl that some secret mystery — to be explained one day
— prevented his marrying her just then ; and so she had gone on,
trusting patiently to him, until she trusted too far, and lost what none
could ever give her back. She was, at that time, within a few months
of her confinement. He told her all he had meant to do, to hide her
shame, if he had lived, and prayed her, if he died, not to curse his
memory, or think the consequences of their sin would be visited on
her or their young child ; for all the guilt was his. He reminded her
of the day he had given her the little locket and the ring with her
christian name engraved upon it, and a blank left for that which he
hoped one day to have bestowed upon her — prayed her yet to keep
it, and wear it next her heart, as she had done before — and then ran

Reluctant Admissions. 321

on, wildly, in the same words, over nnd over again, as if be bad gonf
distracted. I believe be bad."

" Tbe will," said Mr. Brownlow, as Oliver's tears fell fast.

Monks was silent.

" Tbe will," said Mr. Brownlow, speaking for bim, " was in tbe
same spirit as tbe letter. Ho talked of miseries wbicb his wife bad
brought upon him ; of tbe rebellious disposition, vice, malice, and
premature biul passions of you bis only son, who bad been trained to
bate bim ; and left you, and your mother, each an annuity of eight
hundred pounds. I'he bulk of bis property be divided into two equal
portions — one for Agnes Fleming, and the other for their child, if it
should be born alive, and ever come of age. If it were a girl, it was
to inherit the money unconditionally ; but if a boy, only on tbe stipu-
lation that in bis minority he should never have stained bis name
with any public act of dishonour, meanness, cowardice, or wrong. He
did this, he said, to mark bis confidence in tbe mother, and bis con-
viction— only strengthened by approaching death — that tbe child
would share her gentle heart, and noble nature. If he were dis-
appointed in this expectation, then tbe money was to come to you :
for then, and not till then, when both children were equal, would be
recognise yotir prior claim upon bis purse, who bad none upon his
heart, but bad, &om an infant, repulsed bim with coldness and aver-
sion."

"My mother," said Monks, in a louder tone, "did what a woman
should have done. She burnt this will. The letter never reached its
destination ; but that, and other proofs, she kept, in case they ever
tried to lie away tbe blot. The girl's father had the truth from her
with every aggravation that her violent bate — I love her for it now —
could add. Goaded by shame and dishonour be fled with his children
into a remote corner of Wales, changing bis very name that bis friends
might never know of his retreat ; and here, no great while afterwards,
he was found dead in bis bed. The girl bad left her home, in secret,
some weeks before ; be had searched for her, on foot, in every town
and village near ; it was on the night when he returned home, assured
that she had destroyed herself, to bide her shame and his, that bis old
heart broke."

There was a short silence here, until Mr. Brownlow took uj) the
thread of the narrative.

"Years after this," be said, "this man's— Edward Leeford's —
mother came to me. He bad left her, when only eighteen ; robbed
her of jewels and money ; gambled, squandered, forged, and fled to
London : where for two years he bad associated with the lowest out-
casts. She was sinking under a painful and incurable disease, and
wished to recover bim before she died. Inquiries were set on foot,
and strict searches made. They were unavailing for a long time, but
ultimately successful ; and be went back with her to France."

"There she died," said Monks, "pfter a lingering illness; and, on

T

322 Oliver Tivist.

her death-bed, she bequeathed these secrets to mc, together with her
nnquenchable and deadly hatred of all whom they involved — though
she need not have left mo that, for I had inherited it long before.
She would not believe that the girl had destroyed herself, and the
child too, but was filled with the impression that a male child had
been born, and was alive. I swore to her, if ever it crossed my path,
to hunt it down ; never to let it rest ; to pursue it with tho bitterest
and most unrelenting animosity ; to vent upon it the hatred that I
deeply felt, and to spit upon the empty vaunt of that insulting will by
dragging it, if I could, to tho very gallows-foot. She was right. Ho
came in my way at last. I began well ; and, but for babbling drabs,
I would have finished as I began ! "

As the villain folded his arms tight together, and muttered curses
on himself in tho impotence of baffled malice, Mr. Brownlow turned
to the terrified group beside him, and explained that the Jew, who
had been his old accomplice and confidant, had a large reward for
keeping Oliver ensnared : of which some part was to be given up, in
the event of his being rescued : and that a dispute on this head had
led to their visit to the country house for the purpose of identifying
him.

" The locket and ring ? " said Mr. Bro\\Tilow, turning to Monks.

" I bought them from the man and woman I told you of, who stolo
them from the nurse, who stole them from the corpse," answered
Monks without raising his eyes. " You know what became of them."

Mr. Brownlow merely nodded to Mr. Grimwig, who disappearing
with great alacrity, shortly returned, pushing in Mrs. Bumble, and
dragging her unwilling consort after him.

"Do my hi's deceive me!" cried Mr. Bumble, with ill-feigned
enthusiasm, "or is that little Oliver? Oh O-li-ver, if you know'd
how I've been a-grieving for you "

" Hold your tongue, fool," murmured Mrs. Bumble.

" Isn't natur, natur, Mrs. Bumble ? " remonstrated the workhouso
master. " Can't I be supposed to feel — I as brought him ujj
porochially — when I see him a-setting here among ladies and gentle-
men of the very afiablest description ! I always loved that boy as if
he'd been my — my — my own grandfather," said Mr. Bumble, halting
for an appropriate comparison. " Master Oliver, my dear, you
remember the blessed gentleman in the white waistcoat ? Ah ! he
went to heaven last week, in a oak coffin with plated handles, Oliver."

" Gome, sir," said Mr. Grimwig, tartly ; " suppress your feelings."

" I will do my endeavours, sir," replied Mr. Bumble. " How do
you do, sir ? I hope you are very well."

This salutation was addressed to Mr. Brownlow, who had stepped
up to within a short distance of the respectable couple. He inquired^
as ho pointed to Monks,

" Do you know that person ? "

" No," replied Mrs. Bumble flatly.

Mr. and Mrs. Biivible foiled. 323

" Perhaps you don't ? " said Mr. Brownlow, addressing her spouse.

" I never saw him in all my life," said Mr. Bnmble.

" Nor sold him anything, perhaps ? "

" No," replied Mrs. Bumble.

" You never had, perhaps, a certain gold locket and ring ? " said
Mr. Brownlow.

" Certainly not," replied the matron. " Why are wo brought hero
to answer to such nonsense as this ? "

Again Mr. Brownlow nodded to Mr. Grimwig; and again that
gentleman limped away with extraordinary readiness. But not again
did he return with a stout man and wife ; for this time, ho led in two
palsied women, who shook and tottered as they walked.

" You shut the door the night old Sally died," said the foremost
one, raising her shrivelled hand, "but you couldn't shut out tho
sound, nor stop the chinks."

"No, no," said the other, looking round her and wagging her
toothless jaws. " No, no, no."

" We heard her try to tell you what she'd done, and saw you take a
paper from her hand, and watched you too, next day, to the pawn-
broker's shop," said the first.

"Yes," added the second, "and it was a 'locket and gold ring.*
Wo found out that, and saw it given you. We were by. Oh ! we
were by."

" And we know more than that," resumed the first, " for she told us
often, long ago, that the young mother had told her that, feeling she
should never get over it, she was on her way, at the time that she was
taken ill, to die near the grave of the father of the child."

" Would you like to see the pawnbroker himself ? " asked Mr.
Grimwig with a motion towards the door.

" No," replied the woman ; " if he " — she pointed to Monks — " has
been coward enough to confess, as I see he has, and you have sounded
all these hags till you have found the right ones, I have nothing more
to say. I did sell them, and they're where you'll never get them.
What then?"

" Nothing," replied Mr. Brownlow, " except that it remains for us
to take care that neither of you is employed in a situation of trust
again. You may leave the room."

" I hope," said Mr. Bumble, looking about him with great rueful-
ness, as Mr. Grimwig disappeared with tho two old women : " I hope
that this unfortunate little circumstance will not deprive me of ray
porochial office ? "

" Indeed it will," replied Mr. Brownlow. " You may make up your
mind to that, and think yourself well ofi" besides."

" It was all Mrs. Bumble. She icould do it," urged Mr. Bnmble ;
first looking round to ascertain that his partner had left the room.

" That is no excuse," replied Mr. Brownlow. " You were present
on the occasion of the destruction of these trinkets, and indeed are the

324 Oliver Ttvist.

more guilty of the two, in the eye of the law ; for the law supposes
that your wife acts under your direction."

" If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat
emphatically in both hands, " the law is a nss — a idiot. If that's the
eye of the law, the law is a bachelor ; and the worst I wish the law is,
that his eye may be opened by experience — by experience."

Laying great stress on the repetition of these two words, Mr.
Bumble tixed his hat on very tight, and putting his hands in his
pockets, followed his helpmate down-stairs.

" Young lady," said Mr. Brownlow, turning to Rose, " give me your
hand. Do not tremble. You need not fear to hear the few remaining
words we have to say."

" If they have— I do not know how they can, but if they have — any
reference to me," said Rose, *' pray let me hear them at some other
time. I have not strength or spirits now."

" Nay," returned the old gentleman, drawing her arm through his ;
" you have more fortitude than this, I am sure. Do you know this
young lady, sir ? "

" Yes," replied Monks.

" I never saw you before," said Rose faintly.

" I have seen you often," returned Monks.

" The father of the unhappy Agnes had two daughters," said Mr.
Brownlow. " What was the fate of the other — the child ? ■'

" The child," replied Monks, " when her father died in a strange
place, in a strange name, without a letter, book, or scrap of paper that
yielded the faintest clue by which his friends or relatives could bo
traced — the child was taken by some wretched cottagers, who reared
it as their own."

" Go on," said Mr. Brownlow, signing to Mrs. Maylie to approach.
« Go on ! "

" You couldn't find the spot to which these people had repaired,"
said Monks, "but where friendship fails, hatred will often force a
way. My mother found it, after a year of cunning search — ay, and
found the child."

" She took it, did she ? "

" No. The people were poor and began to sicken — at least the man
did — of their fine humanity ; so she left it with them, giving them a
small present of money which would not last long, and promised more,
Avhich she never meant to send. She didn't quite rely, however, on
their discontent and poverty for the child's unhappiness, but told the
history of the sister's shame, with such alterations as suited her;
bade them take good heed of the child, for she came of bad blood ;
and told them she was illegitimate, and sure to go wrong at one time
or other. The circumstances countenanced all this; the people
believed it ; and there the child dragged on an existence, miserable
enough even to satisfy us, until a widow lady, residing, then, at
Chester, saw the girl by chance, pitied her, and took her home.

The Course of True Love. 325

There was some cursed spell, I tliink, against us ; for in spite of all
our efforts she remained there and was happy. I lost sight of her, two
or three years ago, and saw her no more until a few months back."

" Do you see her now ? "

" Yes. Leaning on your arm."

" But not the less my niece," cried Mrs. Maylie, folding the fainting
girl in her arms ; " not the less my dearest child. I would not lose
her now, for all the treasures of the world. My sweet companion, my
own dear girl ! "

" The only friend I ever had," cried Eose, clinging to her. " The
kindest, best of fiiends. My heart will burst. I cannot bear all this."

" You have borne more, and have been, through all, the best and
gentlest creature that ever shed happiness on every one she knew,"
said Mrs. Maylie, embracing her tenderly. " Come, come, my love,
remember who this is who waits to clasp you in his arms, poor child !
See here — look, look, my dear ! "

" Not aunt," cried Oliver, throwing his arms about her neck ; " I'll
never call her aunt — sister, my own dear sister, that something taught
my heart to love so dearly from the first ! Rose, dear, dai-ling Rose ! "

Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were exchanged
in the long close embrace between the orphans, be sacred. A father,
sister, and mother, were gained, and lost, in that one moment. Joy
and grief were mingled in the cup ; but there were no bitter tears :
for even grief itself arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and
tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all
character of pain.

They were a long, long time alone. A soft tap at the door, at
length announced that some one was without. Oliver opened it,
glided away, and gave place to Harry Maylie.

" I know it all," he said, taking a seat beside the lovely girl. " Dear
Rose, I know it all."

" I am not hero by accident," he added after a lengthened silence ;
"nor have I heard all this to-night, for I knew it yesterday — only
yesterday. Do you guess that I have come to remind you of a
promise '? "

" Stay," said Rose. « You do know all." ^

" All. You gave me leave, at any time within a year, to renew the
subject of our last discourse."

" I did."

" Not to press you to alter your determination," pursued the young
man, " but to hear you repeat it, if you would. 1 was to lay whatever
of station or fortune I might possess at your feet, and if you still
atlhcred to your former determination, I pledged myself, by no word
or act, to seek to change it."

" The same reasons which influenced me then, will influence me
now," said Rose firmly, " If I ever owed a strict and rigid duty to
her, whose goodness saved me from a life of indigence and suffering,

326 Oliver Tzvist.

when should I ever feel it, as I should to-night ? It is a struggle,"
said Kose, " but one I am proud to make ; it is a pang, but one my
heart shall bear."

" The disclosure of to-night, — " Harry began.

" The disclosure of to-night," replied Rose softly, " leaves mo in
the same position, with reference to you, as that in which I stood
before."

" You harden your heart against me. Rose," urged her lover.

" Oh, Harry, Harry," said the young lady, bursting into tears ; " I
wish I could, and spare myself this pain."

" Then why inflict it on yourself? " said Harry, taking her hand.
" Think, dear Rose, think what you have heard to-night."

" And what have I heard ! What have I heard ! " cried Rose.
" That a sense of his deep disgrace so worked upon my own father
that he shunned all — there, we have said enough, Harry, we have
said enough."

" Not yet, not yet," said the young man, detaining her as she rose.
" My hopes, my mshes, prospects, feeling : every thought in life
except my love for you : have undergone a change. I offer you, now,
no distinction among a bustling crowd ; no mingling with a world of
malice and detraction, where the blood is called into honest cheeks by
aught but real disgrace and shame ; but a home — a heart and home —
yes, dearest Rose, and those, and those alone, are all I have to offer."

" What do you mean ! " she faltered.

" I mean but this — that when I left you last, I left you with a firm
determination to level all fancied barriers between yourself and me ;
resolved that if my world could not be yours, I would make yours
mine ; that no pride of birth should curl the lip at you, for I would
turn from it. This I have done. Those who have shrunk from me
because of this, have shrunk from you, and proved you so far right.
Such power and patronage : such relatives of influence and rank : as
smiled upon me then, look coldly now ; but there are smiling fields
and waving trees in England's richest county ; and by one village
church — mine. Rose, my own ! — there stands a rustic dwelling which
you can make me prouder of, than all the hopes I have renounced,
measured a thousandfold. This is my rank and station now, and here
1 lay it down ! "

*******

" It's a trying thing waiting supper for lovers," said Mr. Grim wig,
waking up, and pulling his pocket-handkerchief from over his head.

Truth to tell, the supper had been waiting a most unreasonable
time. Neither Mrs. Maylie, nor Harry, nor Rose (who all came in
together), could offer a word in extenuation.

" I had serious thoughts of eating my head to-night," said Mr.
Grimwig, " for I began to think I should get nothing else. I'll take
the liberty, if you'll allow me, of saluting the bride that is to be."

Mr. Grimwig lost no time in carrying this notice into effect upon

Wandering Mmd and Imprisoned Body. 327

the blushing girl ; and the example, being contagious, was followed
both by the doctor and Mr. Brownlow : some people affirm that Harry
Maylio had been observed to set it, originally, in a dark room adjoin-
ing; but the best authorities consider this downright scandal: he
being young and a clergyman.

" Oliver, my child," said Mrs. Maylie, " where have you been, and
why do you look so sad ? There are tears stealing down your face at
this moment. What is the matter ? "

It is a world of disappointment : often to the hopes we most cherish,
and hopes that do our nature the greatest honour.

Poor Dick was dead !

CHAPTER LII.
fagin's last night alive.

The court was paved, from floor to roof, with human faces. Inquisitive
and eager eyes peered from every inch of space. From the rail before
the dock, away into the sharpest angle of the smallest corner in the
galleries, all looks were fixed upon one man — Fagin. Before him and
behind : above, below, on the right and on the left : he seemed to
stand surrounded by a firmament, all bright with gleaming eyes.

He stood there, in all this glare of living light, with one hand
resting on the wooden slab before him, the other held to his ear, and
his head thrust forward to enable him to catch with greater distinct-
ness every word that fell from the presiding judge, who was delivering
his charge to the jury. At times, he turned his eyes sharply upon
them to observe the effect of the slightest featherweight in his favour ;
and when the points against him were stated with terrible distinctness,
looked towards his counsel, in mute appeal that he would, even then,
urge something in his behalf. Beyond these manifestations of anxiety,
ho stirred not hand or foot. He had scarcely moved since the trial
began ; and now that the judge ceased to speak, he still remained in
the same strained attitude of close attention, with his gaze bent on
him, as though he listened still.

A slight bustle in the court, recalled him to himself. Looking
round, he saw that the jurymen liad turned together, to consider of
their verdict. As his eyes wandered to the galleiy, he could see the
people rising above each other to see his face : some hastily applying
their glasses to their eyes: and others whispering their neighbours
with looks expressive of abhorrence. A few there were, who seemed
unmindful of him, and looked only to the jury, in impatient wonder
how they could delay. But in no one face — not even among tho
• women, of whom there were many there — could he read tho faintest

328 Oliver Tzvtst.

sympathy witt himself, or any feeling but one of all-absorbing interest
that he should be condemned.

As he saw all this in one bewildered glance, the death-like stillness
came again, and looking back, he saw that the jurymen had turned
towards the judge. Hush !

They only sought permission to retire.

He looked, wistfully, into their faces, one by one, when they passed
out, as though to see which way the greater number leant ; but that
was fruitless. The jailer touched him on the shoulder. He followed
mechanically to the end of the dock, and sat down on a- chair. The
man pointed it out, or he would not have seen it.

He looked up into the gallery again. Some of the people were
eating, and some fanning themselves with handkerchiefs ; for the
crowded place was very hot. There was one young man sketching his
face iu a little note-book. He wondered whether it was like, and
looked on when the artist broke his pencil-point, and made another
with his knife, as any idle spectator might have done.

In the same way, when he turned his eyes towards the judge, his
mind began to busy itself with the fashion of his dress, and what it
cost, and how he put it on. There was an old fat gentleman on the
bench, too, who had gone out, some half-an-hour before, and now
come back. He wondered within himself whether this man had been
to get his dinner, what he had had, and where he had had it ; and
pursued this train of careless thought until some new object caught
his eye and roused another.

Not that, all this time, his mind was, for an instant, free from one
oppressive overwhelming sense of the grave that opened at his feet ;
it was ever present to him, but in a vague and general way, and he
could not fix his thoughts upon it. Thus, even while he trembled,
and turned burning hot at the idea of speedy death, he fell to counting
the iron spikes before him, and wondering how the head of one had
been broken off, and whether they would mend it, or leave it as it
was. Then, he thought of all the horrors of the gallows and the
scaffold — and stopped to watch a man sprinkling the fioor to cool it —
and then went on to think again.

At length there was a cry of silence, and a breathless look from all
towards the door. The jury returned, and passed him close. Ho
could glean nothing from their faces ; they might as well have been
of stone. Perfect stillness ensued — not a rustle — not a breath —
GuUty.

The building rang with a tremendous shout, and another, and
another, and then it echoed loud groans, that gathered strength as
they swelled out, like angiy thunder. It was a peal of joy from tho
populace outside, greeting the news that he would die on Monday.

The noise subsided, and he was asked if he had anything to say
why sentence of death should not be passed upon him. He had
resumed his listening attitude, and looked intently at his questioner

cJAz^yn''y^9^' ^^^ ro9?^^'?99y9^.e€[^

Sentenced. 329

while the demand was made ; but it was twice repeated before he
seemed to hear it, and then he only muttered that he was an old man
— an old man — an old man— and so, dropping into a whisper, was
silent again.

The judge assumed the black cap, and the prisoner still stood with
the same air and gesture. A woman in the gallery uttered some
exclamation, called forth by this dread solemnity ; he looked hastily
up as if angry at the interruption, and bent forward yet more atten-
tively. The address was solemn and impressive ; the sentence fearful
to hear. But he stood, like a marble figure, without the motion of a
nerve. His haggard face was still thrust forward, his under-jaw
hanging down, and his eyes staring out before him, when the jailer
put his hand upon his arm, and beckoned him away. He gazed
stupidly about him for an iustaut, and obeyed.

They led him through a paved room under the court, where some
prisoners were waiting till their turns came, and others were talking
to their friends, who crowded round a grate which looked into the open
yard. There was nobody there, to speak to Mm ; but, as he passed,
the prisoners fell back to render him more visible to the people who
were clinging to the bars : and they assailed him with opprobrious
names, and screeched and hissed. He shook his fist, and would
have spat upon them ; but his conductors hurried him on, through
a gloomy passage lighted by a few dim lamps, into the interior of
the prison.

Here, he was searched, that he might not have about him the means
of anticipating the law ; this ceremony perfonned, they led him to one
of the condemned cells, and left him there — alone.

He sat down on a stone bench opposite the door, which served for
seat and bedstead ; and casting his blood-shot eyes upon the ground,
tried to collect his thoughts. After awhile, he began to remember a
few disjointed fragments of what the judge had said : though it had
seemed to him, at the time, that he could not hear a word. These
gradually fell into their proper places, and by degrees suggested
more : so that in a little time he had the whole, almost as it was
delivered. To be hanged by the neck, till he was dead — that was the
end. To be hanged by the neck till he was dead.

As it came on very dark, he began to think of all the men he had
known who had died upon the scaffold ; some of them through his
means. They rose up, in such quick succession, that he could hardly
count them. He had seen some of them die, — and had joked too,
Ixjcause they died with prayers upon their lips. With what a rattling
noise the drop went down ; and how suddenly they changed, from
strong and vigorous men to dangling heaps of clothes !

Some of them might have inhabited that very cell — sat upon that
very spot. It was very dark ; why didn't they bring a light ? The
cell had been built for many years. Scores of men must have passed
their last hours there. It was like sittting in a vault strewn with

330 Oliver Twist.

dead bodies — the cap, the noose, the pinioned arms, the faces that he
knew, even beneatli that hideous veil. — Light, light !

At length, when his hands were raw with beating against the heavy
door and walls, two men appeared : one bearing a candle, wliich ho
thrust iuto an iron candlestick fixed against the wall : the other
dragging in a mattress on which to pass the night ; for the prisoner
was to be left alone no more.

Then came night — dark, dismal, silent night. Other watchers are
glad to hear this church-clock strike, for they tell of life and coming
day. To him they brought despair. The boom of every iron bell
came laden with the one, deep, hollow sound — Death. What availed
the noise and bustle of cheerful morning, which penetrated even there,
to him ? It was another form of knell, with mockery added to the
warning.

The day passed off. Day? There was no day; it was gone as
soon as come — and night came on again ; night so long, and yet so
short ; long in its dreadful silence, and short in its fleeting hours.
At one time he raved and blasphemed ; and at another howled and
tore his hair. Venerable men of his own persuasion liad come to pray
beside him, but he had driven them away with curses. They renewed
their charitable efforts, and he beat them off.

Saturday night. He had only one night more to live. And as ho
thought of this, the day broke — Sunday.

It was not until the night of this last awful day, that a withering
sense of his helpless, desperate state came in its full intensity upon
his blighted soul ; not that he had ever held any defined or positive
hope of mercy, but that he had never been able to consider more than
the dim probability of dying so soon. He had spoken little to either
of the two men, who relieved each other in their attendance upon
him ; and they, for their parts, made no effort to rouse his attention.
He had sat there, awake, but dreaming. Now, he started up, every
minute, and with gasping mouth and burning skin, hurried to and fro,
in such a paroxysm of fear and wrath that even they — used to such
sights — recoiled from him with horror. He grew so terrible, at last,
in all the tortures of his evil conscience, that one man could not bear
to sit there, eyeing him alone ; and so the two kept watch together.

He cowered down upon his stone bed, and thought of the past. He
had been wounded with some missiles from the crowd on the day of
his capture, and his head was bandaged with a linen cloth. His red
hair hung down upon his bloodless face ; his beard was torn, and
twisted into knots ; his eyes shone with a terrible light ; his unwashed
flesh crackled with the fever that burnt him up. Eight — nine — ten.
If it was not a trick to frighten him, and those were the real hours
treading on each other's heels, where would he be, when they came
round again ! Eleven ! Another struck, before the voice of the
previous hour had ceased to vibrate. At eight, he would be the only
mourner in his own funeral train ; at eleven

Mr. Brownlow and Oliver at Newgate. 331

Those dreadful walls of Newgate, whicli have hidden so much
misery and such unspeakable anguish, not only from the eyes, but, too
often, and too long, from the thoughts, of men, never held so dread a
spectacle as that. The few who lingered as they passed, and wondered
what the man was doing who was to be hanged to-morrow, would have
slept but ill that night, if they could have seen him.

From early in the evening until nearly midnight, little groups of
two and three presented themselves at the lodge-gate, and inquired,
with anxious faces, whether any reprieve had been received. These
beiug answered in the negative, communicated the welcome intelligence
to clusters in the street, who pointed out to one another the door from
which he must come out, and showed whore the scaftbld would be
built, and, walking with unwilling steps away, turned back to conjure
up the scene. By degrees they fell off, one by one ; and, for an hour,
in the dead of night, the street was left to solitude and darkness.

The space before the prison was cleared, and a few strong barriers,
painted black, had been already thrown across the road to break the
pressure of the expected crowd, when Mr. Brownlow and Oliver
appeared at the wicket, and presented an order of admission to the
prisoner, signed by one of the sheriffs. They were immediately
admitted into the lodge.

" Is the young gentleman to come too, sir ? " said the man whose
duty it was to conduct them. " It's not a sight for children, sir."

" It is not indeed, my fiiend," rejoined Mi\ Brownlow ; " but my
business with this man is intimately connected with him ; and as this
child has seen him in the full career of his success and villainy, I
think it as well — even at the cost of some pain and fear — that he
should see him now."

These few words had been said apart, so as to be inaudible to Oliver.
The man touched his hat ; and glancing at Oliver with some curiosity,
opened another gate, opposite to that by which they had entered, and
led them on, through dark and winding ways, towards the cells.

" This," said the man, stopping in a gloomy passage where a couple
of workmen were making some preparations in profound silence — •
*' this is the place he passes through. If yon step this way, yon can
see the door he goes out at."

He led them into a stone kitchen, fitted with coppers for dressing
the prison food, and pointed to a door. There was an open grating
above it, through which came the sound of men's voices, mingled with
the noiso of hammering, and the throwing down of boards. They
were putting up the scaffold.

From this place, they passed through several strong gates, opened
by other turnkeys from the inner side ; and, having entered an open
yard, ascended a flight of narrow steps, uud came into a passage with
a row of strong doors on the left hand. Motioning them to remain
where they were, the turnkey knocked at one of these with his bunch
of keys. The iwo attendants, after a little whispering, came out into the

332 Oliver Twist.

passage, stretcliing themselves as if glad of the temporary relief, and
motioned the visitors to follow the jailer into the cell. They did so.

The condemned criminal was seated on his bed, rocking himself
from side to side, with a countenance more like that of a snared boast
than the face of a man. His mind was evidently wandering to his old
life, for he continued to mutter, without appearing conscious of their
presence otherwise than as a part of his vision.

" Good boy, Charley — well done — " he mumbled. " Oliver, too,
ha ! ha ! ha ! Oliver too — quite the gentleman now — quite the — take
that boy away to bed ! "

The jailer took the disengaged hand of Oliver ; and, whispering him
not to be alarmed, looked on wdthout speaking.

" Take him away to bed ! " cried Fagin. " Do you hear me, some
of yon ? He has been the — the — somehow the cause of all this. It's
worth the money to bring him up to it — Bolter's throat, Bill ; never
mind the girl — Bolter's throat as deep as you can cut. Saw his head
off!"

" Fagin," said the jailer.

" That's me ! " cried the Jew, falling, instantly, into the attitude of
listening he had assumed upon his trial. " An old man, my Lord ; a
very old, old man ! "

" Here," said the turnkey, laying his hand upon his breast to keep
him down. " Here's somebody wants to see you, to ask you some
questions, I suppose. Fagin, Fagin ! Are you a man ? "

" I shan't be one long," he replied, looking up with a face retaining
no human expression but rage and terror. " Strike them all dead !
What right have they to butcher me ? "

As he spoke he caught sight of Oliver and Mr. Brownlow. Shrink-
ing to the furthest corner of the seat, he demanded to know what they
wanted there.

" Steady," said the turnkey, still holding him down. " Now, sir, tell
him what you want. Quick, if you please, for he grows worse as the
time gets on."

"You have some papers," said Mr. Brownlow advancing, "which were
placed in your hands, for better security, by a man called Monks."

" It's all a lie together," replied Fagin. " I haven't one — not one."

" For the love of God," said Mr. Brownlow solemnly, " do not say
that now, upon the very verge of death ; but tell me where they are.
You know that Sikes is dead ; that Monks has confessed ; that there
is no hope of any further gain. Where are those papers ? "

" Oliver," cried Fagin, beckoning to him. " Here, here ! Let me
whisper to you."

" I am not afraid," said Oliver in a low voice, as he relinquished
Mr. Brownlow's hand.

" The papers," said Fagin, drawing Oliver towards him, " are in a
canvas bag, in a hole a little way up the chimney in the top front-
room. I want to talk to you, my dear. I want to talk to you."

No Escape. 333

" Yes, yes," retnraed Oliver. " Let me say a prayer. Do ! Let
mc say one prayer. Say only one, upon your knees, with me, and we
will talk till morning."

" Outside, outside," replied Fagin, pushing the boy before him
towards the door, and looking vacantly over his head. " Say I've gone
to sleep — they'll believe yon. You can get me out, if you take mc so.
Now then, now then ! "

" Oh ! God forgive this wretched man ! " cried the boy with a
burst of tears.

"That's right, that's right," said Fagin. "That'll help us on.
This door first. If I shake and tremble, as we pass the gallows, don't
you mind, but hurry on. Now, now, now ! "

"Have you nothing else to ask him, sir?" inquired the turnkey.

" No other question," replied Mr. Brownlow. " If I hoped we could
recall him to a sense of his position "

"Nothing will do that, sir," replied the man, shaking his head.
" You had better leave him."

The door of the coll opened, and the attendants returned.

" Press on, press on," cried Fagin. " Softly, but not so slow.
Faster, faster ! "

The men laid hands upon him, and disengaging Oliver from his
grasp, held him back. He struggled with the power of desperation,
for an instant ; and then sent up cry upon cry that penetrated even
those massive walls, and rang in their ears until they reached the
open yard.

It was some time before they left the prison. Oliver nearly swooned
after this frightful scene, and was so weak that for an hour or more,
he had not the strength to walk.

Day was dawning when they again emerged. A great multitude
had already assembled ; the windows were filled with people, smoking
and playing cards to beguile the time ; the crowd were pnshing,
quarrelling, joking. Everything told of life and animation, but one
dark cluster of objects in the centre of all — the black stage, the cross-
beam, the rope, and all the hideous apparatus of death.

CHAPTEE LIII.

AND LAST.

The fortunes of those who have figured in this tale are nearly closed.
The little that remains to their historian to relate, is told in few
and simple words.

Before three months had passed, Eose Fleming and Harry Maylie
were married in the village church which was henceforth to be the

334 Oliver Twist.

Bccno of tho young clergyman's labours ; on the same day they entered
into possession of their now and happy home.

Mrs. Maylio took up her abode with her son and daughter-in-law,
to enjoy, during the tranquil remainder of her days, the gi'eatest
felicity that ago and worth can know — the contemplation of tho
happiness of those on whom the warmest affections and tendcrest
cares of a well-spent life, have been unceasingly bestowed.

It appeared, on full and careful investigation, that if the wreck of
property remaining in the custody of Monks (which had never
prospered either in his hands or in those of his mother) were equally
divided between himself and Oliver, it would yield, to each, little
more than three thousand pounds. By the provisions of his father's
will, Oliver would have been entitled to the whole ; but Mr. Brownlow,
unwilling to deprive the elder son of the opportunity of retrieving his
former vices and pursuing an honest career, proposed this mode of
distribution, to which his young charge joyfully acceded.

Monks, still bearing that assumed name, retired with his portion to
a distant part of the New World ; where, having quickly squandered
it, he once more fell into his old courses, and, after undergoing a long
confinement for some fresh act of fraud and knavery, at length sunk
Tinder an attack of his old disorder, and died in prison. As far from
home, died the chief remaining members of his friend Fagin's gang.

Mr. Brownlow adopted Oliver as his son. Removing with him and
the old housekeeper to within a mile of the parsonage-house, where
his dear friends resided, he gratified the only remaining wish of
Oliver's warm and earnest heart, and thus linked together a little
society, whose condition approached as nearly to one of perfect
happiness as can ever be known in this changing world.

Soon after the marriage of tho young people, the worthy doctor
returned to Chertsey, where, bereft of the i)resence of his old friends,
he would have been discontented if his temperament had admitted of
such a feeling ; and would have turned quite peevish if he had known
how. For two or three months, he contented himself with hinting
that he feared the air began to disagree with him ; then, finding that
the place really no longer was, to him, what it had been, he settled
his business on his assistant, took a bachelor's cottage outside the
village of Avhich his young friend was pastor, and instantaneously
recovered. Here he took to gardening, planting, fishing, carpentering,
and various other pursuits of a similar kind : all undertakon with his
characteristic impetuosity. In each and all, he has since become
famous throughout the neighbourhood, as a most profound authority.

Before his removal, he had managed to contract a strong friendship
for Mr. Grimwig, which that eccentric gentleman cordially reciprocated.
He is accordingly visited by Mr. Grimwig a great many times in tho
course of the year. On all sucli occasions, Mr. Grimwig plants, fishes,
and carpenters, with great ardour ; doing everything in a very singular
and unprecedented manner, but always maintaining with his favourite

Supplementary. 335

asseveration, that his mode is the right one. Ou Sundays, ho never
fails to criticise the semion to the young clergyman's face : always
informing Mr. Losberne, iu strict confidence afterwards, that he con-
siders it an excellent performance, but deems it as well not to say so.
It is a standing and very favonrite joke, for Mr. Brownlow to rally
him on his old prophecy concerning Oliver, and to remind him of the
night on which they sat with the watch between them, waiting his
return ; but Mr. Grimwig contends that he was right in the main, and,
in proof thereof, remarks that Oliver did not come hack, after all ;
which always calls forth a laugh on his side, and increases his good
humour.

Mr. Noah Claypole : receiving a free pardon from the Crown in
consequence of being admitted approver against Fagin : and consider-
ing his profession not altogether as safe a one as he could wish : was,
for some little time, at a loss for the means of a livelihood, not
burthcned with too much work. After some consideration, he went
into business as an Informer, in which calling he realises a genteel
subsistence. His plan is, to walk out once a week during church
time attended by Charlotte in respectable attire. The lady faints
away at the doors of charitable publicans, and the gentleman being
accommodated with threepenny worth of brandy to restore her, lays au
information next day, and pockets half the penalty. Sometimes Mr.
Claypole faints himself, but the result is the same.

Mr. and Mrs. Bumble, deprived of their situations, were gradually
reduced to great indigence and misery, and finally became paupers iu
that very same workhouse in which they had once lorded it over
others. Mr. Bumble has been heard to say, that in this reverse and
degradation, he has not even spirits to be thankful for being separated
from his wife.

As to Mr. Giles and Brittles, they still remain in their old posts,
although the former is bald, and the last-named boy quite grey.
They sleep at the parsonage, but divide their attentions so equally
among its inmates, and Oliver, and Mr. Brownlow, and Mr. Losberne,
that to this day the villagers have never been able to discover to
which establishment they properly belong.

Master Charles Bates, appalled by Sikes's crime, fell into a train of
reflection whether an honest life was not, after all, the best. Arriving
at the conclusion that it certainly was, he turned his back npon the
scenes of the past, resolved to amend it in some new sphere of action.
He struggled hard, and suffered much, for some time ; bnt, having a
contented disposition, and a good purpose, succeeded in the end ; and,
from being a farmer's drudge, and a carrier's lad, ho is now the
merriest young gi-azier in all Northamptonshire.

And now, the hand that traces these words, falters, as it approaches
the conclusion of its task ; and would weave, for a little longer space,
the thread of these adventures.

I would fain linger yet with a few of those among whom I have so

33^ Oliver Twist.

long moved, and share their happiness by endeavouring to depict it.
I would show Rose Maylie in all the bloom and grace of early
womanhood, shedding on her secluded path in life soft and gentle
light, that fell on all who trod it with her, and shone into their
hearts. I would paint her the life and joy of the fire-side circle and
the lively summer group ; I would follow her through the sultry
fields at noon, and hear the low tones of her sweet voice in the
moonlit evening walk ; I would watch her in all her goodness and
charity abroad, and the smiling untiring discharge of domestic duties
at home ; I would paint her and her dead sister's child happy in their
love for one another, and passing whole hours together in picturing
the friends whom they had so sadly lost ; I would summon before mo,
once again, those joyous little faces that clustered round her knee, and
listen to their merry prattle ; I would recall the tones of that clear
laugh, and conjure up the sympathising tear that glistened in the soft
blue eye. These, and a thousand looks and smiles, and turns of
thought and speech — I would fain recall them every one.

How Mr. Brownlow went on, from day to day, filling the mind of
his adopted child with stores of knowledge, and becoming attached to
him, more and more, as his nature developed itself, and showed the
thriving seeds of all he wished him to become — how he traced in him
new traits of his early friend, that awakened in his own bosom old
remembrances, melancholy and yet sweet and soothing — how the two
orphans, tried by adversity, remembered its lessons in mercy to others,
and mutual love, and fervent thanks to Him who had protected and
preserved them — these are all matters which need not to be told, I
have said that they were truly hkppy ; and without strong affection
and humanity of heart, and gratitude to that Being whose code is
Mercy, and whose great attribute is Benevolence to all things that
breathe, happiness can never be attained.

Within the altar of the old village church there stands a white
marble tablet, which bears as yet but one word : " Agnes." There is
no coffin in that tomb; and may it be many, many years, before
another name is placed above it ! But, if the spirits of the Dead ever
come back to earth, to visit spots hallowed by the love— the lovo
beyond the grave — of those whom they knew in life, I believe that the
shade of Agnes sometimes hovers round that solemn nook. I believe
it none the less because that nook is in a Church, and she was weak
and erring.

THE END,

A TALE OF TWO CITIES.

FRONTSSPSECE

Jk TALfl

TW® €Ilfil[E

Charles Dickers

COXDOX.

PREFACE.

WuEN I was acting, with my children and friends, in Mr. Wilkib
CoLLiNs's drama of The Frozen Deep, I first conceived the main idea
of this story. A strong desire was upon me then, to emhody it in my
own person ; and I traced out in my fancy, the state of mind of which
it would necessitate the presentation to an observant spectator, with
particular care and interest.

As the idea became familiar to me, it gradually shaped itself into
its present form. Throughout its execution, it has had complete
possession of mo ; I have so far verified what is done and suftered in
these pages, as that I have certainly done and sufiered it all myself.

Whenever any reference (however slight) is made here to the con-
dition of the French people before or during the Revolution, it is
truly made, on the faith of trustworthy witnesses. It has been one
of my hopes to add something to the popular and picturesque means
of understanding that terrible time, though no one can hope to add
anything to the philosophy of Mr. Carlyle's wonderful book.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES,

BOOK THE FIRST. RECALLED TO LIFE.

CHAPTER I.

THE PERIOD.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was tlic age of
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was
the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Liglit, it was the soasou
of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
wo had everything before us, we had nothing before us, wo were all
going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other -way — in
short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its
noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil,
in the superlative degree of compai'ison only.

There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face,
on the throne of England ; there were a king with a large jaw and a
queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it
was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves
and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.

It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and
seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that
favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Sotithcott had recently attained her
five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in
the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing
that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and
Westminster. Even the Cock Lane ghost had been laid only a round
dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this
very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out
theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come

342 A Tale of Ttvo Cities.

to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects
in America : which, strange to relate, have proved more important to
the human race than any communications yet received through any of
the chickens of the Cock Lane brood.

France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her
sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness
downhill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance
of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such
humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off,
his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because
he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession
of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or
sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France
and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to
death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and bo
sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack
and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the
rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris,
there wore sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts,
bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by
poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to bo his
tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer,
though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them
as they went about with muffled tread : the rather, forasmuch as to
entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical
and traitorous.

In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection
to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men,
and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night ;
families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town Avithout re-
moving their furniture to upholsterers' warehouses for security ; the
highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being
recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped
in his character of " the Captain," gallantly shot him through the head
and rode away ; the mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard
shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four,
" in consequence of the failure of his ammunition : " after which the
mail was robbed in peace ; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor
of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one
highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his
retinue ; prisoners in London gaols fought battles with their turnkeys,
and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded
with rounds of shot and ball ; thieves snipped off diamond crosses
from the necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms ; musketeers
went into St. Giles's, to search for contraband goods, and the mob
fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and
nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common

The Mail-coach Passenger, 343

way. In the midst of thom, the hangman, cvor busy and ever worse
than useless, was in constant requisition ; now, stringing up long rows
of miscellaneous criminals ; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday
who had been taken on Tuesday ; now, burning people in the hand at
Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of
Westminster Ilall ; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer,
and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy
of sixpence.

All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and
close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-
five. Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked
unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the
plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine
rights with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven
hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of
small creatures — the creatures of this chronicle among the rest —
along the roads that lay before them.

CHAPTER II.

THE MAIL.

It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November,
before the first of the persons with whom this history has business.
The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered
up Shooter's Hill. Ho walked uphill in the mire by the side of the
mail, as the rest of the passengers did ; not because they had the least
relish for walking exercise, under the circumstances, but because the
hill, and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were all so heavy,
that the horses had three times already come to a stop, besides once
drawing the coach across the road, with the mutinous intent of taking
it back to Blackheath. Reins and whip and coachman and guard,
however, in combination, had read that article of war which forbad a
purpose otherwise strongly in favour of the argument, that some brate
animals are endued with Reason ; and the team had capitulated and
returned to their duty.

With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed their way
through the thick mud, floundering and stumbling between whiles, as
if they were falling to pieces at the larger joints. As often as the
driver rested them and brought them to a stand, with a wary " Wo-ho I
BO-ho then ! " the near leader violently shook his head and everything
upon it— like an unusually emphatic horse, denying that the coach could
be got up the hill. Whenever the leader made this rattle, the passenger
started, as a nervous passenger might, and was disturbed in mind.

344 -^ Tale of Two Cities.

There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in
its forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding
none. A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way
through the air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread one
♦nother, as the waves of an unwholesome sea might do. It was dense
enough to shut out everything from the light of the coach-lamps but
these its own workings, and a few yards of road ; and the reek of the
labouring horses steamed into it, as if they had made it all.

Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill
by the side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheek-bones
and over the ears, and wore jack-boots. Not one of the three could
have said, from anything he saw, what either of the other two was like ;
and each was hidden under almost as many wrappers from the eyes of
the mind, as from the eyes of the body, of his two companions. In those
days, travellers were very shy of being confidential on a short notice,
for anybody on the road might be a robber or in league with robbers.
As to the latter, when every posting-house and ale-house could produce
somebody in " the Captain's " pay, ranging from the landlord to the
lowest stable nondescript, it was the likeliest thing upon the cards.
So the guard of the Dover mail thought to himself, that Friday night
in November, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumber-
ing up Shooter's Hill, as ho stood on his own particular perch behind
the mail, beating his feet, and keeping an eye and a hand on the arm-
chest before him, where a loaded blunderbuss lay at the top of six or
eight loaded horse-pistols, deposited on a substratum of cutlass.

The Dover mail was in its usual genial position that the guard sus-
pected the passengers, the passengers suspected one another and the
guard, they all suspected everybody else, and the coachman was sure
of nothing but the horses ; as to which cattle he could with a clear
conscience have taken his oath on the two Testaments that they were
not fit for the journey.

" Wo-ho ! " said the coachman. " So, then ! One more pull and
you're at the top and be damned to you, for I have had trouble enough
to get you to it ! — Joe ! "

" Halloa ! " the guard replied.
What o'clock do you make it, Joe ? "

* Ten minutes, good, past eleven."

" My blood ! " ejaculated the vexed coachman, " and not atop of
Shooter's yet ! Tst ! Yah ! Get on with you ! "

The emphatic horse, cut short by the whip in a most decided
negative, made a decided scramble for it, and the three other horses
followed suit. Once more, the Dover mail struggled on, with the
jack-boots of its passengers squashing along by its side. They had
stopped when the coach stopped, and they kept close company with it.
If any one of the three had had the hardihood to propose to another to
walk on a little ahead into the mist and darkness, he would have put
himself in a fair way of getting shot instantly as a highwayman.

A Messenger on Horseback. 345

The last burst carried the mail to the summit of the hill. The
horses stopped to breathe again, and the guard got down to skid the
wlieel for the descent, and open the coach-door to let the passengers in.

" Tst ! Joe ! " cried the coachman in a warning voice, looking
down from his box.

" What do you say, Tom ? "

They both listened.

" I say a horse at a canter coming up, Joe."

" 1 say a horse at a gallop, Tom," returned the guard, leaving his
hold of the door, and mounting nimbly to his place. " Gentlemen !
In the king's name, all of you ! "

With this hurried adjuration, he cocked his blunderbuss, and stood
on the offensive.

The passenger booked by this history, was on the coach-step,
getting in ; the two other passengers were close behind him, and
about to follow. He remained on the step, half in the coach and half
out of it ; they remained in the road below him. They all looked from
the coachman to the guard, and from the guard to the coachman, and
listened. The coachman looked back and the guard looked back, and
even the emphatic leader piicked up his ears and looked back, mthout
contradicting.

The stillness consequent on the cessation of the rumbling and
labouring of the coach, added to the stillness of the night, made
it very quiet indeed. The panting of the horses communicated a
tremulous motion to the coach, as if it were in a state of agitation.
The hearts of the passengers beat loud enough perhaps to be heard ;
but at any rate, the quiet pause was audibly expressive of people out
of breath, and holding the breath, and having the pulses quickened by
expectation.

The sound of a horse at a gallop came fast and furiously up the
hill.

" So-ho ! " the guard sang out, as loud as he could roar. " Yo there !
Stand ! I shall fire ! "

The pace was suddenly checked, and, with much splashing and
floundering, a man's voice called from tlae mist, " Is that the Dover
maU ? "

"Never you mind what it is?" the guard retorted. "What are
you?"

" J« that the Dover maU ? "

" Why do you want to know ? "

" I want a passenger, if it is."

" What passenger ? "

" Mr. Jarvis Lorry."

Our booked passenger showed in a moment that it was his name.
The guard, the coachman, and the two other passengers eyed him
distrustfully.

" Keep where you are," the guard called to the voice in the mist.

346 A Tale of Two Cities.

" because, if I shculd make a mistake, it could never be set right in
your lifetime. Gentleman of the name of Lorry answer straight."

'• What is the matter ? " asked the passenger, then, with mildly
quavering speech. " Who wants me ? Is it Jerry ? "

(" I don't like Jerry's voice, if it is Jerry," growled the guard to
himself. " He's hoarser than suits me, is Jerry.")

" Yes, Mr. Lorry."

" What is the matt-er ? '

" A despatch sent after you from over yonder. T. and Co."

" I know this messenger, guard," said Mr. Lorry, getting down into
the road — assisted from behind more swiftly than politely by the
other two passengers, who immediately scrambled into the coach, shut
the door, and pulled up the window. " He may come close ; there's
nothing wrong."

" I hope there ain't, but I can't make so 'Nation sure of that," said
the guard, in gruff soliloquy. " Hallo you ! "

" Well ! And hallo you ! " said Jerry, more hoarsely than before.

" Come on at a footpace ! d'ye mind me ? And if you've got
holsters to that saddle o' youm, don't let me see your hand go nigh
'em. For I'm a devil at a quick mistake, and when I make one it
takes the form of Lead. So now let's look at you."

The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through the eddying
mist, and came to the side of the mail, where the passenger stood.
The rider stooped, and, casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the
passenger a small folded paper. The rider's horse was blown, and
both horse and rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of the
horse to the hat of the man.

" Guard ! " said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business confidence.

The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of his raised
blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on the horseman,
answered curtly, " Sir."

" There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson's Bank.
You must know Tellson's Bank in London. I am going to Paris on
business. A crown to drink. I may read this ? "

" If so be as you're quick, sir."

He opened it in the light of the coach-lamp on that side, and read
• — first to himself and then aloud : " ' W'ait at Dover for Mam'sclle.*
It's not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answer was, re-
called TO LIFE."

Jerry started in his saddle. "That's a Blazing strange answer,
too," said he, at his hoarsest.

" Take that message back, and they will know that I received
this, as well as if I wrote. Make the best of your way. Good-
night."

With those words the passenger opened the coach-door and got in ;
not at all assisted by his fellow-passengers, who had expeditiously
secreted their watches and purses in their boots, and were now making

^^

. ^

n

Human Inscrutability. 347

a general pretence of being asleep. With no more definite purpose
than to escape the hazard of originating any other kind of action.

The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of mist closing
round it as it began the descent. The guard soon replaced his
blunderbuss in his arm-chest, and, having looked to the rest of its
contents, and having looked to the supplementary pistols that he wore
in liis belt, looked to a smaller chest beneath his seat, in which there
were a few smith's tools, a couple of torches, and a tinder-box. For
he was furnished with that completeness that if the coach-lamps liad
been blown and stormed out, which did occasionally happen, he had
only to shut himself up inside, keep the flint and steel sparks well off
the straw, and get a light with tolerable safety and case (if ho wore
lucky) in five minutes.

" Tom ! " softly over the coach-roof.

« Hallo, Joe."

" Did you hear the message ? "

« I did, Joe."

" What did you make of it, Tom ? "

" Nothing at all, Joe."

" That's a coinadencc, too," the guard mused, " for I made the
same of it myself."

Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted meanwhile,
not only to ease his spent horse, but to wipe the mud from his face,
and shake the wet out of his hat-brim, which might bo capable of
holding about half a gallon. After standing with the bridle over his
heavily-splashed arm, until the wheels of the mail were no longer
within hearing and the night was quite still again, he turned to walk
down the hill.

" After that there gallop from Temple Bar, old lady, I won't trust
your fore-legs till I get you on the level," said this hoarse messenger,
glancing at his mare. " * Becalled to life.' That's a Blazing strange
message. Much of tliat wouldn't do for you, Jen*y ! I say, Jerry !
You'd be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into
fashion, Jerry ! "

CHAPTER III.

THE NIGHT SHADOWS.

A WONDERFUL fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is
constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A
solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every
one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret ; that
©very room in every one of them encloses its own secret ; that every

348 A Tale of Two Cities,

beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in
some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it ! Something
of the awfalness, even of Death itseK, is referable to this. No more
can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope
in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this
xmfathomablo water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I
have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged.
It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever
and for ever, when I liad read but a page. It was appointed that the
Avater should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing
on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is
dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead ;
it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that
was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to
my life's end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which
I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants
are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them ?

As to this, his natural and not to be alienated inheritance, the
messenger on horseback had exactly the same possessions as the King,
the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London. So
with the three passengers shut up in the narrow compass of one
lumbering old mail coach ; they were mysteries to one another, as
complete as if each had been in his own coach and six, or his own
coach and sixty, with the breadth of a county between him and the
next.

The messenger rode back at an easy trot, stopping pretty often at
ale-houses by the way to drink, but evincing a tendency to keep his
own counsel, and to keep his hat cocked over his eyes. He had eyes
that assorted very well with that decoration, being of a surface black,
with no depth in the colour or form, and much too near together — as
if thoy were afraid of being found out in something, singly, if they
kept too far apart. They had a sinister expression, under an old
cocked hat like a three-cornered spittoon, and over a great muflfler for
the chin and throat, which descended nearly to the wearer's knees.
When he stopped for drink, he moved this muffler with his left hand,
only while he poured his lic[Uor in with his right ; as soon as that was
done, he muffled again.

" No, Jerry, no ! " said the messenger, harping on one theme as he
rode. " It wouldn't do for you, Jerry. Jerry, you honest tradesman,
it wouldn't suit your line of business ! Recalled — ! Bust me if I
don't think he'd been a drinking ! "

His message perplexed his mind to that degree that he was fain,
several times, to take oflf his hat to scratch his head. Except on the
crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing
jaggedly all over it, and growing downhill almost to his broad, blunt
nose. It was so like smith's work, so much more like the top of a
gtrongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players %t

[

I

Skadoivs of the Night. 349

leap-fi-og might have declined him, as the most dangerotts man in the
world to go over.

While he trotted back with the message he was to deliver to the
night watchman in his box at the door of Tellson's Bank, by Temple
Bar, who was to deliver it to greater authorities within, the shadows
of the night took such shapes to him as arose out of the message, and
took such shapes to the mare as arose out of lier private topics of
uneasiness. They seemed to be numerous, for she shied at every
shadow on the road.

What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, and bumped
upon its tedious way, with its three fellow-inscrutables inside. To
whom, likewise, the shadows of the night revealed themselves, in the
forms their dozing eyes and wandering thoughts suggested.

Tellson's Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the bank
passenger — with an arm drawn through the leathern strap, which did
what lay in it to keep him from pounding against the next passenger,
and driving him into his corner, whenever the coach got a special jolt
— nodded in his place, with half-shut eyes, the little coach-windows,
and tlie coach-lamp dimly gleaming through them, and the bulky
bundle of opposite passenger, became the bank, and did a great stroke
of business. The rattle of the harness was the chink of money, and
more drafts were honoured iu five minutes than even Tellson's, with
all its foreign and home connection, ever paid in thrice the time. Then
the strong-rooms underground, at Tellson's, with such of their valuable
stores and secrets as were known to the passenger (and it was not a
little that he knew about them), opened before him, and he went in
among them with the great keys and the feebly-burning candle, and
found them safe, and strong, and sound, and still, just as he had last
seen them.

But, though the bank was almost always with him, and though the
coach (in a confused way, like the presence of pain under an opiate)
was always with him, there was another current of impression that
never ceased to run, all through the night. He was on his way to dig
some one out of a grave.

Now, which of the multitude of faces that showed themselves before
him was the true face of the buried person, the shadows of the night
did not indicate ; but they were all the faces of a man of five-and-forty
by years, and they differed principally in the passions they expressed,
and in the ghastliness of their worn and wasted state. Pride, con-
tempt, defiance, stubbornness, submission, lamentation, succeeded one
another ; so did varieties of sunken cheek, cadaverous colour, emaciated
hands and figures. But the face was in the main one face, and every
head was prematurely white. A hundred times the dozing passenger
inquired of this specti-e :

" Buried how long ? "

The answer was always the same : " Almost eighteen years."

" You had abandoned all hope of being dug out ? "

350 ^ Tale of Two Cities.

" Long ago."

" You know that yon are recalled to life ? "

" They tell me so."

" I hope you care to live ? "

" I can't say."

" Shall I show her to you ? Will you come and see her ? "

The answers to this question were various and contradictory.
Sometimes the broken reply was, " Wait ! It would kill me if I saw
her too soon." Sometimes it was given in a tender rain of tears, and
then it was, "Take me to her." Sometimes it was staring and
bewildered, and then it was, "I don't know her. I don't under-
stand."

After such imaginary discourse, the passenger in his fancy would
dig, and dig, dig — now with a spade, now with a great key, now with
his hands — to dig this wretched creature out. Got out at last, with
earth hanging about his face and hair, he would suddenly fall away
to dust. The passenger would then start to himself, and lower the
window, to get the reality of mist and rain on his cheek.

Yet even when his eyes were opened on the mist and rain, on the
moving patch of light from the lamps, and the hedge at the roadside
retreating by jerks, the night shadows outside the coach would fall
into the train of the night shadows within. The real Banking-house
by Temple Bar, the real business of the past day, the real strong-
rooms, the real express sent after him, and the real message returned,
would all be there. Out of the midst of them, the ghostly face would
rise, and he would accost it again.

" Buried how long ? "

" Almost eighteen years."

" I hope you care to live ? "

" I can't say."

Dig — dig — dig — until an impatient movement from one of the two
passengers would admonish him to pull up the window, draw his arm
securely through the leathern strap, and speculate upon the two
slumbering forms, until his mind lost its hold of them, and they again
slid away into the bank and the grave.

" Bui-ied how long ? "

" Almost eighteen years."

" You had abandoned all hope of being dug out ? "

*' Long ago."

The words were still in his hearing as just spoken — distinctly in
his hearing as ever spoken words had been in his life — when the
weary passenger started to the consciousness of daylight, and found
that the shadows of the night were gone.

He lowered the Avindow, and looked out at the rising sun. There
was a ridge of ploughed land, with a plough upon it where it had
been left last night when the horses were imyoked ; beyond, a quiet
coppice-woodj in which many leaves of burning red and golden yellow

The Gentleman in Brown. 35 1

still remained upon the trees. Though the earth was cold and wet,
the sky was clear, and the sun rose bright, placid, and beautiful.

" Eighteen years I " said the passenger, looking at the sun.
" Gracious Creator of day ! To be buried alive for eighteen yeai-s ! "

CHAPTER IV.

THE PREPAUATIOK.

Whkn the mail got successfully to Dover, in the course of the fore-
noon, the head drawer at the Royal George Hotel opened the coach-
door as his custom was. He did it with some flourish of ceremony,
for a mail journey from London in winter was an achievement to
congratulate an adventurous traveller upon.

By that time, there was only one adventurous traveller left to bo
congratulated : for the two others had been set down at their respective
roadside destinations. The mildewy inside of the coach, with its
damp and dirty straw, its disagreeable smell, and its obscurity, was
rather like a larger dog-kennel. Mr. Lorry, the passenger, shaking
himself out of it in chains of straw, a tangle of shaggy wi'apper,
flapping hat, and muddy legs, was rather like a larger sort of dog.

" There will be a packet to Calais, to-morrow, di-awer ? "

"Yes, sir, if the weather holds and the wind sets tolerable fair.
The tide will serve pretty nicely at about two in the afternoon, sir.
Bed, sir?"

" I shall not go to bed till night ; but I want a bedroom, and a
barber"

" And then breakfast, sir ? Yes, sir That way, sir, if you please.
Show Concord ! Gentleman's valise and hot water to Concord. Pull
off gentleman's boots in Concord. (You will find a fine sea-coal fire,
sir ) Fetch barber to Concord. Stir about there, now, for Concord ! "

The Concord bed-chamber being always assigned to a passenger by
the mail, and passengers by the mail being always heavily wrapped
up from head to foot, the room had the odd interest for the establish-
ment of the Royal George, that although but one kind of man was
seen to go into it, all kinds and varieties of men came out of it.
Consequently, another drawer, and two porters, and several maids and
the landlady, were all loitering by accident at various points of the
road between the Concord and the coffee-room, when a gentleman of
sixty, formally dressed in a brown suit of clothes, pretty well worn,
bat very well kept, with large square cuffs and largo flaps to tho
pockets, passed along on his way to his breakfast.

The coffee-room had no other occupant, that forenoon, than tho
gentleman in brown. His breakfast-table was drawn before the fire,

352 A Tale of Two Cities.

and as he sat, with its light shining on him, waiting for the meal, he
sat so still, that he might have been sitting for his portrait.

Very orderly and methodical he looked, with a hand on each knee,
and a loud watch ticking a sonorous sermon under his flapped waist-
coat, as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity
and evanescence of the brisk fire. He had a good leg, and was a
little vain of it, for his brown stockings fitted sleek and close, and
were of a fine texture ; his shoes and buckles, too, though plain, were
trim. He wore an odd little sleek crisp flaxen wig, setting very close
to his head : which wig, it is to be presumed, was made of hair, but
which looked far more as though it were spun from filaments of silk
or glass. His linen, though not of a fineness in accordance with his
stockings, was as white as the tops of the waves that broke upon the
neighbouring beach, or the specks of sail that glinted in the sunlight
far at sea. A face habitually suppressed and quieted, was still lighted
up under the quaint wig by a pair of moist bright eyes that it must
have cost their owner, in years gone by, some pains to drill to the
composed and reserved expression of Tellson's Bank. He had a
healthy colour in his cheeks, and his face, though lined, bore few
traces of anxiety. But, perhaps the confidential bachelor clerks in
Tellson's Bank were principally occupied with the cares of other
people ; and perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes,
come easily off and on.

Completing his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his
portrait, Mr. Lorry dropped off to sleep. The arrival of his breakfast
roused him, and he said to the drawer, as he moved his chair to it :

" I wish accommodation prepared for a young lady who may come
here at any time to-day. She may ask for Mr. Jarvis Lorry, or she
may only ask for a gentleman from Tellson's Bank. Please to let me
know."

" Yes, sir. Tellson's Bank in London, sir ? "

« Yes."

"Yes, sir. "We have oftentimes the honour to entertain your
gentlemen in their travelling backwards and forwards betwixt
London and Paris, sir. A vast deal of travelling, sir, in Tellson and
Company's House."

"Yes. We are quite a French House, as well as an English
one."

" Yes, sir. Not much in the habit of such travelling yourself, I
think, sir ? "

" Not of late years. It is fifteen years since we— since 1— came
last from France."

"Indeed, sir? That was before my time here, sir. Before our
people's time here, sir. The George was in other hands at that time,
sir."

•' I believe so,"

*• Bat I would hold a pretty wager, sir, that a House like Tellsou

Arrival of Miss Manette. 353

and Company was flourishing, a matter of fifty, not to speak of fifteen
years ago ? "

•' You might treble that, and say a hundred and fifty, yet not be far
from the truth."

" Indeed, sir I "

Rounding his mouth and both his eyes, as he stepped backward
from the table, the waiter shifted his napkin from his right arm to his
loft, dropped into a comfortable attitude, and stood surveying the
guest while he ate and drank, as from an observatory or watch-tower.
According to the immemorial usage of waiters in all ages.

When Mr. Lorry had finished his breakfast, he went out for a stroll
on the beach. The little narrow, crooked town of Dover hid itself
away from the beach, and ran its head into the chalk cliffs, like a
marine ostrich. The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones
tumbling wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and what it
liked was destmction. It thimdered at the town, and thundered at
the cliffs, and brought the coast down, madly. The air among the
houses was of so strong a piscatory flavour that one might have sup-
posed sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick people went down
to be dipped in the sea. A little fishing was done in the port, and a
quantity of strolling about by night, and looking seaward : particularly
at those times when the tide made, and was near flood. Small trades-
men, who did no business whatever, sometimes unaccountably realised
large fortunes, and it was remarkable that nobody in the neighbour-
hood could endure a lamplighter.

As the day declined into the afternoon, and the air, which had been
at intervals clear enough to allow the French coast to be seen, became
again charged with mist and vapour, Mr. Lorry's thoughts seemed to
cloud too. When it was dark, and he sat before the coffee-room fire,
awaiting his dinner as he had awaited his breakfast, his mind was
busily digging, digging, digging, in the live red coals.

A bottle of good claret after dinner does a digger in the red coals
no harm, otherwise than as it has a tendency to throw him out of
work. Mr. Lorry had been idle a long time, and had just poured out
his last glassful of wine with as complete an appearance of satisfaction
as is ever to be found in an elderly gentleman of a fresh complexion
who has got to the end of a bottle, when a rattling of wheels came up
the naiTOw street, and rumbled into the inn-yard.

He set down his glass untouched. " This is Mam'selle ! " said he.

In a very few minutes the waiter came in to announce that Miss
Manette had arrived from London, and would be happy to see the
gentleman from Tellson's.

" So soon ? "

Miss Manette had taken some refreshment on the road, and required
none then, and was extremely anxious to see the gentleman from
Tellson's immediately, if it suited his pleasure and convenience.

The gentleman from Tellson's had nothing left for it but to empty

2 a

354 -^ Tale of Two Cities.

his glass with an air of stolid desperation, settle his odd little waxen
wig at the ears, and follow the waiter to Miss Manette's apartment.
It was a large, dark room, famished in a funereal manner with black
horsehair, and loaded with heavy dark tables. These had been oiled
and oiled, until the two tall candles on the table in the middle of the
room were gloomily reflected on every leaf ; as if ihey were buried, in
deep graves of black mahogany, and no light to speak of could be
expected from them until they were dug out.

The obscurity was so difficult to penetrate that Mr. Lorry, picking
his way over the well-worn Turkey carpet, supposed Miss Manette to
bo, for the moment, in some adjacent room, until, having got past the
two tall candles, he saw standing to receive him by the table between
them and the fire, a young lady of not more than seventeen, in a
riding-cloak, and still holding her straw travelling-hat by its ribbon
in her hand. As his eyes rested on a short, slight, pretty figure, a
quantity of golden hair, a pair of blue eyes that met his own witli an
inquiring look, and a forehead with a singular capacity (remembering
how young and smooth it was), of lifting and knitting itself into an
expression that was not quite one of perplexity, or wonder, or alarm,
or merely of a bright fixed attention, though it included all the four
expressions — as his eyes rested on these things, a sudden vivid likeness
passed before him, of a child whom he had held in his arms on the
passage across that very Channel, one cold time, when the hail drifted
heavily and the sea ran high. The likeness passed away, like a breath
along the surface of the gaunt pier-glass behind her, on the frame of
which, a hospital procession of negro cupids, several headless and all
cripples, were ottering black baskets of Dead Sea fruit to black
divinities of the feminine gender — and he made his formal bow to
Miss Manette.

" Pray take a seat, sir." In a very clear and pleasant young voice ;
a little foreign in its accent, but a very little indeed.

" I kiss your hand, miss," said Mr. Lorry, with the manners of an
earlier date, as he made his formal bow again, and took his seat.

'• I received a letter from the Bank, sir, yesterday, informing mo
that some intelligence — or discovery "

" The word is not material, miss ; either word will do."

" — respecting the small property of my poor father, whom I never
saw — so long dead "

Mr. Lorry moved in his chair, and cast a troubled look towards the
hospital procession of negro cupids. As if they had any helj) for
anybody in their absurd baskets !

" — rendered it necessary that I should go to Paris, there to com-
municate with a gentleman of the Bank, so good as to be despatched
to Paris for the purpose."

" Myself."

" As I was prepared to hear, sir."

She curtseyed to him (young ladies made curtseys in those days),

The Interview. 355

with a pretty desire to convey to him that she felt how much older
and wiser he was than she. He made her another bow.

" I replied to the Bank, sir, that as it was considered necessary, by
those who know, and who are so kind as to advise me, that I should
go to France, and that as I am an orphan and have no friend who
could go with me, I should esteem it highly if I might be permitted
to place myself, during the journey, under that worthy gentleman's
protection. The gentleman had left London, but I think a messenger
was sent after him to beg the favour of his waiting for me hero."

" I was happy,** said Mr. Lorry, " to be entrusted with the charge.
I shall be more happy to execute it."

" Sir, I thank you indeed. I thank you very gi-atefuUy. It was
told me by the Bank that the gentleman would explain to me the
details of the business, and that I must prepare myself to find them of
a surprising nature. I have done my best to prepare myself, and I
naturally have a strong and eager interest to know what they are."

« Naturally," said Mr. Lorry. " Yes— I "

After a pause, he added, again settling the crisp flaxen wig at
the cars :

" It is very difficult to begin." ^

He did not begin, but, in his indecision, met her glance. The
young forehead lifted itself into that singular expression — but it was
pretty and characteristic, besides being singular — and she raised her
hand, as if with an involuntary action she caught at, or stayed some
passing shadow.

" Are you quite a stranger to me, sir ? "

" Am I not ? " Mr. Lorry opened his hands, and extended them
outwards with an argumentative smile.

Between the eyebrows and just over the little feminine nose, the
line of which was as delicate and fine as it was possible to be, the
expression deepened itself as she took her seat thoughtfully in
the chair by which she had hitherto remained standing. He watched
her as she mused, and the moment she raised her eyes again, went on :

" In your adopted country, I presume, I cannot do better than
address you as a young English lady, Miss Manotte ? "

" If you please, sir."

" Miss Manette, I am a man of business. I have a business charge
to acquit myself of. In your reception of it, don't heed me any more
than if I was a speaking machine — truly, I am not much else. I will,
with your leave, relate to you, miss, the story of one of our customers."

" Story ! "

He seemed wilfully to mistake the word she had repeated, when he
added, in a hurry, " Yes, customers ; in the banking business we
usually call our connection our customers. He was a French gentle-
man ; a scientific gentleman ; a man of great acquirements — a Doctor."

«'Notof Beauvais?"

" Why, yes, of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the

3S6 A Tale of Two Cities.

gentleman was of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the
gentleman was of repute in Paris. I had the honour of knowing him
there. Our relations were business relations, but confidential. I was
at that time in our French House, and had been — oh ! twenty years."

" At that time — I may ask, at what time, sir ? "

" I speak, miss, of twenty years ago. He married — an English
lady — and I was one of the trustees. His affairs, like the affairs of
many other French gentlemen and French families, were entirely in
Tellson's hands. In a similar way I am, or I have been, trustee of
one kind or other for scores of our customers. These are mere
business relations, miss ; there is no friendship in them, no particular
interest, nothing like sentiment. I have passed from one to another,
in the course of my business life, just as I pass from one of our
customers to another in the course of my business day ; in short, I
have no feelings ; I am a mere machine. To go on "

" But this is my father's story, sir ; and I begin to think " — the
curiously roughened forehead was very intent upon him — " that when
I was left an orphan through my mother's surviving my father only
two years, it was you who brought me to England. I am almost sure
it was you."

Mr. Lorry took the hesitating little hand that confidingly advanced
to take his, and he put it with some ceremony to his lips. He then
conducted the young lady straightway to her chair again, and, holding
the chair-back with his left hand, and using his right by turns to rub
his chin, pull his wig at the ears, or point what he said, stood looking
down into her face while she sat looking up into his.

" Miss Manette, it was I. And you will see how truly I spoke of
myself just now, in saying I had no feelings, and that all the relations
I hold with my fellow- creatures are mere business relations, when you
reflect that I have never seen you since. No ; you have been the ward
of Tellson's House since, and I have been busy with the other business
of Tellson's House since. Feelings ! I have no time for them, no
chance of them. I pass my whole life, miss, in turning an immense
pecuniary Mangle."

After this odd description of his daily routine of employment, Mr.
Lorry flattened his flaxen wig upon his head with both hands (which
was most unnecessary, for nothing could be flatter than its shining
surface was before), and resumed his former attitude.

" So far, miss (as you have remarked), this is the story of your
regretted father. Now comes the difference. If your father had
not died when he did Don't be frightened ! How you start ! "

She did, indeed, start. And she caught his wrist with both her
hands.

" Pray," said Mr. Lorry, in a soothing tone, bringing his left hand
from the back of the chair to lay it on the supplicatory fingers that
clasped him in so violent a tremble : " pray control your agitation — a
matter of business. As I was saying "

Mr. Jarvis Lorry's Disclosure. 357

Her look so discomposed him that he stopped, wandered, and began
anew:

" As I was saying ; if Monsieur Manette had not died ; if ho had
suddenly and silently disappeared ; if he had been spirited away ; if it
had not been difficult to guess to what dreadful place, though no art
could trace him ; if he had an enemy in some compatriot who could
exercise a privilege that I in my own time have known the boldest
people afraid to speak of in a whisper, across the water there ; for
instance, the privilege of filling up blank forms for the consignment
of any one to the oblivion of a prison for any length of time ; if his
wife had implored the king, the queen, the court, the clergy, for any
tidings of him, and all quite in vain ; — then the history of your father
would have been the history of this unfortunate gentleman, the Doctor
of Beauvais."

" I entreat you to tell me more, sir."

" I will. I am going to. You can bear it ? "

" I can bear anything but the uncertainty you leave me in at this
moment."

" You speak collectedly, and you — are collected. That's good ! "
(Though his manner was less satisfied than his words.) " A matter
of business. Eegard it as a matter of business — business that must
be done. Now if this doctor's wife, though a lady of great courage
and spirit, had suffered so intensely from this cause before her little
child was born "

" The little child was a daughter, sir."

"A daughter. A — a — matter of business — don't be distressed.
Miss, if the poor lady had suffered so intensely before her little child
was bom, that she came to the determination of sparing the poor child
the inheritance of any part of the agony she had known the pains of,

by rearing her in the belief that her father was dead No, don't

kneel ! In Heaven's name why should you kneel to me ! "

" For the truth. 0 dear, good, compassionate sir, for the truth ! "

" A — a matter of business. You confuse me, and how can I transact
business if I am confused ? Let us be clear-headed. If you could
kindly mention now, for instance, what nine times ninepence are, or
how many shillings in twenty guineas, it would be so encouraging.
I should be so much more at my ease about your state of mind."

Without directly answering to this appeal, she sat so still when he
had very gently raised her, and the hands that had not ceased to clasp
his wrists were so much more steady than they had been, that she
communicated some re-assurance to Mr. Jarvis Lorry.

" That's right, that's right. Courage ! Business ! You have
business before you ; useful business. Miss Manette, your mother
took this course with you. And when she died — I believe broken-
hearted— having never slackened her unavailing search for your father,
she left you, at two years old, to grow to be blooming, beautiful, and
happy, without the dark cloud upon you of living in uncertainty

358 A Tale of Two Cities.

whether yonr father soon wore his heart out in prison, or wasted there
throTigli many lingering years."

As ho said the words ho looked down, with an admiring pity, on
the flowing golden hair; as if he pictured to himself that it might
have hcen already tinged with grey.

" You know that your parents had no great possession, and that
what they had was secured to your mother and to you. There has
been no new discovery, of money, or of any other property ; but "

He felt his wrist held closer, and he stopped. The expression in
the forehead, which had so particularly attracted his notice, and which
was now immovable, had deepened into one of pain and horror.

" But he has been — been found. He is alive. Greatly changed, it
is too probable ; almost a wreck, it is possible ; though we will hope
the best. Still, alive. Your father has been taken to the house of
an old servant in Paris, and we are going there : I, to identify him if
I can : you, to restore him to life, love, duty, rest, comfort."

A shiver ran through her frame, and from it through his. She
said, in a low, distinct, awe-stricken voice, as if she were saying it in
a dream,

"I am going to see his Ghost! It will be his Ghost — not
him!"

Mr. Lorry quietly chafed the hands that held his arm. " There,
there, there ! See now, see now ! The best and the worst are Icnown
to you, now. You are well on your way to the poor wronged gentle-
man, and, with a fair sea voyage, and a fair land journey, you will bo
soon at his dear side."

She repeated in the same tone, sunk to a whisper, " I have been
free, I have been happy, yet his Ghost has never haunted me ! "

" Only one thing more," said Mr. Lorry, laying stress upon it as a
wholesome means of enforcing her attention : " he has been found
under another name ; his own, long forgotten or long concealed. It
would be worse than useless now to inquire which ; worse than useless
to seek to know whether he has been for years overlooked, or always
designedly held prisoner. It would be worse than useless now to
make any inquiries, because it would be dangerous. Better not to
mention the subject, anywhere or in any way, and to remove him — for
a while at all events — out of France. Even I, safe as an Englishman,
and even Tcllson's, important as they are to French credit, avoid all
naming of the matter. I carry about me, not a scrap of writing openly
referring to it. This is a secret service altogether. My credentials,
entries, and memoranda, are all comprehended in the one line, ' Re-
called to Life ; ' which may mean anything. But what is the matter !
She doesn't notice a word ! Miss Manette ! "

Perfectly still and silent, and not even fallen back in her chair, she
sat under his hand, utterly insensible ; with her eyes open and fixed
upon him, and with that last expression looking as if it were carved
or branded into her forehead. So close was her hold upon his ann,

The Strong Woman. 359

that he feared to detach liimsclf lest he should hurt her ; therefore he
called out loudly for assistance without moving.

A wild-looking woman, whom even in his agitation, Mr. Lorry
observed to be all of a red colour, and to have red hair, and to bo
dressed in some extraordinary tight-fitting fashion, and to have on
her head a most wonderful bonnet like a Grenadier wooden measure,
and good measure too, or a great Stilton cheese, came rxmning into
the room in advance of the inn servants, and soon settled the question
of his detachment from the poor young lady, by laying a brawny hand
upon his chest, and sending him flying back against the nearest wall.

(" I really think this must be a man ! " was Mr. Lorry's breathless
reflection, simultaneously with his coming against the wall.)

" Why, look at you all ! " bawled this figure, addressing the inn
servants. " Why don't you go and fetch things, instead of standing
there staring at me ? I am not so much to look at, am I ? Why
don't you go and fetch things ? I'll let you know, if you don't bring
smelling-salts, cold water, and vinegar, quick, I will."

There was an immediate dispersal for these restoratives, and sho
softly laid the patient on a sofa, and tended her with great skill and
gentleness : calling her " my precious ! " and " my bii'd ! " and spread-
ing her golden hair aside over her shoulders with great pride and
care.

" And you in brown ! " she said, indignantly turning to Mr. Lorry ;
" couldn't you tell her what you had to tell her, without frightening
lier to death ? Look at her, with her pretty pale face and her cold
hands. Do you call that being a Banker ? "

Mr. Lorry was so exceedingly disconcerted by a question so hard to
answer, that he could only look on, at a distance, with much feebler
sympathy and humility, while the strong woman, having banished tho
inn servants under the mysterious penalty of " letting them know "
something not mentioned if they stayed there, staring, recovered her
charge by a regular series of gradations, and coaxed her to lay her
drooping head upon her shoulder.

" I hope she will do well now," said Mr. Lorry.

" No thanks to you in brown, if she does. My darling pretty ! "

" I hope," said Mr. Lorry, after another pause of feeble sympathy
and humility, " that you accompany Miss Manette to Franco ? "

" A likely thing, too ! " replied the strong woman. " If it was ever
intended that I should go across salt water, do you suppose Providence
would have cast my lot in an island '? "

This being another question hard to answer, Mr. Jarvis Lorry
withdrew to consider it.

CHAPTEE V.

THE WINK-SHOP.

A LAiiGE cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street.
The accident Lad happened in getting it out of a cart ; the cask had
tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the stones
just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell.

All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their
idleness, to run to the spot and drink the ^^'ine. The rough, irregular
stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have
thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them,
had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each by its
own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men kneeled
down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tiied to
help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine
had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women,
dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or
even with handkerchiefs from women's heads, which were squeezed
dry into infants' mouths ; others made small mud-embankments, to
stem the wine as it ran ; others, directed by lookers-on up at high
windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that
started away in new directions ; others devoted themselves to the
sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing
the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no
drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up,
but so much mud got taken up along with it, that there might have
been a scavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted with it could
have believed in such a miraculous presence.

A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices — voices of men,
women, and children — resounded in the street while this wine game
lasted. There was little roughness in the sport, and much playful-
ness. There was a special companionship in it, an observable inclina-
tion on the part of every one to join some other one, which led,
especially among the luckier or lighter-hearted, to frolicsome embraces,
drinking of healths, shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and
dancing, a dozen together. When the wine was gone, and the places
where it had been most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern
by fingers, these demonstrations ceased, as suddenly as they had
broken out. The man who had left his saw sticking in the firewood
he was cutting, set it in motion again ; the woman who had left on a
door-step the little pot of hot ashes, at which she had been trying to
soften the pain in her own starved fingers and toes, or in those of
her child, returned to it; men with bare arms, matted locks, and
cadaverous faces, who had emerged into the winter light from cellars,

Hungry Saint Antotne. 361

moved ftway, to descend again ; and a gloom gathered on the scone
that appeared more natural to it than snnshine.

The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow
street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled.
It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet,
and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood,
left red marks on the billets ; and the forehead of the woman who
nursed her baby, was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound
about her head again. Those who had been greedy with the staves
of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth ; and one
tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a
nightcap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in
muddy wine-lees — Blood.

The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on
the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many
there.

And now that the cloud settled on Saint Antoine, which a momentary
gleam had driven from his sacred countenance, the darkness of it was
heavy — cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, and want, were the lords in
waiting on the saintly presence — nobles of great power all of them ;
but, most especially the last. Samples of a people that had undergone
a terrible grinding and re-gi"inding in the mill, and certainly not in
the fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every
comer, passed in and out at every doorway, looked from every window,
fluttered in every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill
which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people
old ; the childi'en had ancient faces and grave voices ; and upon them,
and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and
coming up afresh, was the sign. Hunger. It was prevalent every-
where. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched
clothing that hung upon poles and lines ; Hunger was patched into
them with straw and rag and wood and paper ; Hunger was repeated
in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man
sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys and
started up from the filthy street that had no ofiial, among its refuse, of
anything to cat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves,
written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread ; at the
sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale.
Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the
turned cylinder ; Hunger was shred into atomies in every farthing
porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops
of oil.

Its abiding place was in all things fitted to it. A narrow winding
street, full of offence and stench, with other narrow winding streets
diverging, all peopled by rags and nightcaps, and all smelling of rags
and nightcaps, and all visible things with a brooding look upon them
(bat looked ill. In the hunted air of the people there was yet some

363 A Tale of Two Cities.

wild-boast thought of the possibility of turuiug at bay. Depressed
and slinking though they wore, eyes of firo wore not wanting among
thorn ; nor compressoil lips, white with what they suppressed ; nor
foreheads knitted into the likeness of the gallows-roi>o they mused
about enduring, or inflicting. The trade signs (and they were almost
as many as the shops) were, all, grim illustrations of Want. The
but<."her and the porkman paiuted up, only the leanest scmgs of moat ;
the l>aker, the coarsest of meagre loaves. The people rudely pictureil
as drinking in the wine-shops, croaked over their scanty measures of
thin wine and beer, and were gloweriugly confidential together.
Nothing was represented in a flourishing condition, save tools and
weapons ; but, the cutler's knives and axes were sharp and bright, the
smith's hammers were heavy, and the gunmiiker's stock was murderous.
The crippling stones of the pavement, with their many little reservoirs
of mud and wat«r, had no footways, but broke oif abruptly at the
doors. The kennel, to make amends, ran down the middle of the
street — when it ran at all: which was only after heavy rains, and
then it ran, by many eccentric fits, into the houses. Across the
streets, at wide intervals, one clumsy lamp was slung by a rope
and pulley ; at night, when the lamplighter had let these down, and
lighted, and hoisted them again, a feeble grove of dim wicks swung
in a sickly manner overhead, as if they were at sai. Indeed they
were at sea, and the ship and crew wore in peril of tempest.

For, the time was to come, when the gaunt scarecrows of that
region should have watched the lamplighter, in their idleness and
hunger, so long, as to conceive the idea of improving on his method,
and hauling up men by those ropes and pulleys, to flare upon the
darkness of their condition. But, the time was not come yet ; and
every wind that blew over France shook the rags of the scarecrows in
vain, for the birds, fine of song and feather, took no warning.

The wine-shop was a comer shop, better than most others in its
appearance and degree, and the master of the wine-shop had stood
outside it, in a yellow waistcoat and green breeches, looking on at the
struggle for the lost wine. " It's not my affair," said he, with a final
Bhrug of the shoulders. " The people from the market did it. Let
them bring another."

There, his eyes happening to catch the tall joker writing up his joke,
ho called to him across the way :

" Say, then, my Gaspard, what do you do there ? "

The fellow pointed to his joke with immense significance, as is often
the way with his tribe. It missed its mark, and completely fBoled, as
is often the way with his tribe too.

" What now '? Are you a subject for the mad hospital ? " said the
wine-shop keeper, crossing the road, and obliterating the jest with a
handful of mud, picked up for tlie purpose, and smeared over it.
" Why do you write in the public streets ? Is there — tell me thou —
is there no other place to write such words in ? "

Monsieur and Madame Defarge. 363

In bis expoBtnlation he dropped Iim cleaner hand (pcrliaps acci-
dentally, perhaps not) upon the joker's heart. The joker rapped it
with his own, took a nimble spring upward, and came down in a
fantastic dancing attitude, with one of his stained shoes jerked off his
foot into his hand, and held cut. A joker of an extremely, not to say
wol£shly practical character, he looked, under those circumstances.

" Put it on, put it on," said the other. " Call wine, wine ; and
finish there." With that advice, he wiped his soiled hand upon tho
joker's dress, such as it was— qnite deliberately, as having dirtied
the hand on his account ; and then re-crossed the road and entered
the wine-shop.

This wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martial-looking man of
thirty, and he should have been of a hot temperament, for, although
it was a bitter day, he wore no coat, but carried one slung over his
shoulder. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, too, and his brown arms
were bare to tho elbows. Neither did he wear anything more on his
head than his own crisply-curling short dark hair. He was a dark
man altogether, with good eyes and a good bold breadth between
them. Good-humoured looking on the whole, but implacable-looking,
too ; evidently a man of a strong resolution and a set purpose ; a man
not desirable to be met, rushing down a narrow pass with a gulf on
either side, for nothing would turn the man.

Madame Defarge, his wife, sat in the shop behind tho counter as he
came in. Madame Defarge was a stout woman of about his own age,
with a watchful eye that seldom seemed to look at anything, a large
hand heavily ringed, a steady face, strong features, and great com-
posure of manner. There was a character about Madame Defarge,
from which one might have predicated that she did not often make
mistakes against herseK in any of the reckonings over which she
presided. Madame Defarge being sensitive to cold, was wrapped in
fur, and had a quantity of bright shawl twined about her head,
though not to the conc^ment of her large ear-rings. Her knitting
was before her, but she had laid it down to pick her teeth mth a
toothpick. Thus engaged, with her right elbow supported by her left
hand, Madame Defarge said nothing when her lord came in, but
ajnghed just one grain of cough. This, in combination with tho
lifting of her darkly defined eyebrows over her toothpick by the
breadth of a line, suggested to her husband that he would do well to
look round the shop among the customers, for any new customer who
had dropped in while he stepped over the way.

The wine-shop keeper accordingly rolled his eyes about, until they
rested upon an elderly gentleman and a young lady, who were seated
in a comer. Other company were there: two playing cards, two
playing dominoes, three standing by the counter lengthening out a
short supply of wine. As he passed behind the counter, he took
notice that the elderly gentleman said in a look to the young lady,
•* This is our man."

364 A Tale of Tivo Cities.

" What the devil do you do in that galley there ? " said Monsieur
Defarge to himself; " I don't know you."

But, he feigned not to notice the two strangers, and fell into dis-
course with the triumvirate of customers who were drinking at the
counter.

" How goes it, Jacques ? ' said one of these three to Monsieur
Defarge. " Is all the spilt wine swallowed ? **

" Every drop, Jacques," answered Monsieur Defarge.

When this interchange of christian name was effected, Madame
Defarge, picking her teeth with her toothpick, coughed another grain
of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line.

" It is not often," said the second of the three, addressing Monsieur
Defarge, " that many of these miserable beasts know the taste of wine,
or of anything but black bread and death. Is it not so, Jacques ? "

" It is so, Jacques," Monsieur Defarge returned.

At this second interchange of the christian name, Madame Defarge,
still using her toothpick with profound composure, coughed another
grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line.

The last of the three now said his say, as he put down his empty
drinking vessel and smacked his lips.

" Ah ! So much the worse ! A bitter taste it is that such poor
cattle always have in their mouths, and hard lives they live, Jacques.
Am I right, Jacques ? "

" You are right, Jacques," was the response of Monsieur Defarge.

This third interchange of the christian name was completed at the
moment when Madame Defarge put her toothpick by, kept her eye-
brows up, and slightly rustled in her seat.

"Hold then! True!" muttered her husband. "Gentlemen — my
wife ! "

The three customers pulled off their hats to Madame Defarge, with
three flourishes. She acknowledged their homage by bending her
head, and giving them a quick look. Then she glanced in a casual
manner round the wine-shop, took up her knitting with great apparent
calmness and repose of spirit, and became absorbed in it,

"Gentlemen," said her husband, who had kept his bright eye
observantly upon her, " good-day. The chamber, furnished bachelor-
fashion, that you wished to see, and were inquiring for when I stepped
out, is on the fifth floor. The doorway of the staircase gives on the
little court-yard close to the left here," pointing with his hand, " near
to the window of my establishment. But, now that I remember, one
of you has already been there, and can show the way. Gentlemen,
adieu ! "

Tliey paid for their wine, and left the place. The eyes of Monsieur
Defarge were studying his wife at her knitting when the elderly
gentleman advanced from his corner, and begged the favour of a word.

" Willingly, sir," said Monsieur Defarge, and quietly stepped with
him to the door.

On the Staircase. 365

Their conference was very short, but very decided. Almost at the
first word, Monsieur Defarge started and became deeply attentive.
It had not lasted a minute, when he nodded and went out. The
gentleman then beckoned to the young lady, and they, too, went out.
Madame Defarge knitted with nimble fingers and steady eyebrows,
and saw nothing.

Mr. Jarvis Lorry and Miss Manette, emerging from the wine-shop
thus, joined Monsieur Defarge in the doorway to which he had directed
his other company just before. It opened from a stinking little black
court-yard, and was the general public entrance to a great pile of
houses, inhabited by a great number of people. In the gloomy tile-
paved entry to the gloomy tile-paved staircase, Monsieur Defarge bent
down on one knee to the child of his old master, and put her hand to
his lips. It was a gentle action, but not at all gently done ; a very
remarkable transformation had come over him in a few seconds. He
had no good-humour in his face, nor any openness of aspect left, but
had become a secret, angry, dangerous man.

" It is very high ; it is a little difficult. Better to begin slowly."
Thus, Monsieur Defarge, in a stern voice, to Mr. Lorry, as they began
ascending the stairs.

" Is he alone ? " the latter whispered.

" Alone ! God help him, who should be with him ! " said the other,
in the same low voice.

" Is he always alone, then ? "

" Yes."

" Of his own desire ? "

" Of his own necessity. As he was, when I first saw him after they
found me and demanded to know if I would take him, and, at my
peril, be discreet — as ho was then, so he is now."

" He is greatly changed ? "

" Changed ! "

The keeper of the wine-shop stopped to strike the wall with his
hand, and mutter a tremendous curse. No direct answer could have
been half so forcible. Mr. Lorry's spirits grew heavier and heavier,
as he and his two companions ascended higher and higher.

Such a staircase, with its accessories, in the older and more crowded
parts of Paris, would be bad enough now ; but, at that time, it was
vile indeed to unaccustomed and unhardened senses. Every little
habitation within the great foul nest of one high building — that is to
say, the room or rooms within every door that opened on the general
staircase — left its own heap of refuse on its own lauding, besides
flinging other refuse from its own windows. The uncontrollable and
hopeless mass of decomposition so engendered, would have polluted
the air, even if poverty and deprivation had not loaded it with their
intangible impurities ; the two bad sources combined made it almost
insupportable. Through such an atmosphere, by a steep dark shaft
of diit and poison, the way lay. Yielding to his own disturbance of

366 A Tale of Two Cities.

mind, and to his young companion's agitation, which became greater
every instant, Mr. Jarvis Lorry twice stopped to rest. Each of these
stoppages was made at a doleful grating, by which any languishing
good airs that were left uncorrupted, seemed to escape, and all spoilt
and sickly vapours seemed to crawl in. Through the rusted bars,
tastes, rather than glimpses, were caught of the jumbled neighbour-
hood ; and nothing within range, nearer or lower than the summits of
the two great towers of Notre-Dame, had any promise on it of healthy
life or wholesome aspirations.

At last, the top of the staircase was gained, and they stopped for
the third time. There was yet an upper staircase, of a steeper in-
clination and of contracted dimensions, to be ascended, before the
garret story was reached. The keeper of the wine-shop, always going
a little in advance, and always going on the side which Mr. Lorry
took, as though he dreaded to be asked any question by the young
lady, turned himself about here, and, carefully feeling in the pockets
of the coat be carried over his shoulder, took out a key.

" The door is locked then, my friend ? " said Mr. Lorry, surprised.

" Ay. Yes," was the grim reply of Monsieur Defarge.

" You think it necessary to keep the unfortunate gentleman so
retired ? "

" I think it necessary to turn the key." Monsieur Defarge whis-
pered it closer in his ear, and fro^vned heavily.

" Why ? "

" Why ! Because be has lived so long, locked up, that he would
be frightened — rave — tear himself to pieces — die— come to I know
not what harm — if his door was left open."

" Is it possible ! " exclaimed Mr. Lorry.

" Is it possible ! " repeated Defarge, bitterly. " Yes. And a beauti-
ful world we live in, when it is possible, and when many other such
things are possible, and not only possible, but done — done, see you !
— under that sky there, every day. Long live the Devil. Let us
go om"

This dialogue had been held in so very low a whisper, that not a
word of it had reached the young lady's ears. But, by this time she
trembled imder such strong emotion, and her face expressed such
deep anxiety, and, above all, such dread and terror, that Mr. Lorry
felt it incumbent on him to speak a word or two of reassurance.

** Courage, dear miss ! Courage ! Business ! The worst will be
over in a moment ; it is but passing the room-door, and the worst is
over. Then, all the good you bring to him, all the relief, all the
happiness you bring to him, begin. Let our good friend here, assist
you on that side. That's well, friend Defarge. Come, now. Busi-
ness, business ! "

They went up slowly and softly. The staircase was short, and they
were soon at the top. There, as it had au abrupt turn in it, they
came all at once in sight of three men, whoso heads were bent down

The Ganet. 367

close together at the side of a door, and who were intently looking
into the room to which the door belonged, through some chinks or
lioles in the wall. On hearing footsteps close at hand, these three
turned, and rose, and showed themselves to be the three of one name
who had been drinking in the wine-shop.

" I forgot them in the surprise of your visit," explained Monsieur
Defarge. " Leave us, good boys ; we have business here."

The three glided by, and went silently down.

There appearing to be no other door on that floor, and the keeper
of the wine-shop going straight to this one when they were left alone,
Mr. Lorry asked him in a whisper, with a little anger :

" Do you make a show of Monsieur Manette ? "

" I show him, in the way you have seen, to a chosen few."

« Is that well ? "

" I think it is well.

" Who are the few ? How do you choose them ? "

" I choose them as real men, of my name — Jacques is my name — to
whom the sight is likely to do good. Enough ; you are English ;
that is another thing. Stay there, if you please, a little moment."

"With an admonitory gesture to keep them back, he stooped, and
looked in through the crevice in the wall. Soon raising bis head
again, he struck twice or thrice upon the door — evidently with no
other object than to make a noise there. With the same intention, he
drew the key across it, thi-ee or four times, before he put it clumsily
into the lock, and turned it as heavily as he could.

The door slowly opened inward under his hand, and he looked into
the room and said something. A faint voice answered something.
Little more than a single syllable could have been spoken on either
side.

Ho looked back over his shoulder, and beckoned them to enter.
Mr. Lorry got his arm securely round the daughter's waist, and held
her ; for he felt that she was sinking.

"A — a — a — business, business!" he urged, with a moisture that
was not of business shining on his cheek. " Come in, come in ! "

" I am afraid of it," she answered, shuddering.

"Of it? What?"

" I mean of him. Of my father."

Rendered in a manner desperate, by her state and by the beckoning
of their conductor, he drew over his neck the arm that shook upon his
shoulder, lifted her a little, and hurried her into the room. He set
her down just within the door, and held her, clinging to him.

Defarge drew out the key, closed the door, locked it on the inside,
took out the key again, and held it in his hand. All this ho did,
methodically, and with as loud and harsh an accompaniment of noise
as he could make. Finally, he walked across the room with a
measured tread to where the window was. He stopped there, and
faced round.

368 A Tale of Two Cities.

The gartet, built to be a depository for firewood and the like, was
dim and dark : for, the window of dormer shape, was in truth a door
in the roof, with a little crane over it for the hoisting up of stores
from the street : uuglazed, and closing up the middle in two pieces,
like any other door of French construction. To exclude the cold,
one half of this door was fast closed, and the other was opened but a
very little way. Such a scanty portion of light was admitted through
these means, that it was difficult, on first coming in, to see anything ;
and long habit alone could have slowly formed in any one, the ability
to do any work requiring nicety in such obscurity. Yet, work of that
kind was being done in the garret ; for, with his back towards the
door, and his face towai'ds the window where the keeper of the wine-
shop stood looking at him, a white-haired man sat on a low bench,
stooping forward and very busy, making shoes.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SHOEMAKER.

" GooD-DAY ! " said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at the white
head that bent low over the shoemaking.

It was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice responded to the
salutation, as if it were at a distance :

« Good-day ! "

" You are still hard at work, I see ? "

After a long silence, the head was lifted for another moment, and
the voice replied, "Yes — I am working." This time, a pair of
haggard eyes had looked at the questioner, before the face had
dropped again.

The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not
the faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare
no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it
was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble
echo of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the
life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like
a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken
and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice underground. So expres-
sive it was, of a hopeless and lost creature, that a famished traveller,
wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have remembered
home and friends in such a tone before lying down to die.

Some minutes of silent work had passed : and the haggard eyes hatl
looked up again : not with any interest or curiosity, but with a dull
mechanical perception, beforehand, that the spot where the only
visitor they were aware of had stood, was not^et empty.

The Shoemaker. 369

" I want," said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze from the
shoemaker, " to let in a little more light here. Yon can bear a little
more ? "

The slioemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant air of
listening, at the floor on one side of him ; then similarly, at the floor
on the other side of him ; then, upward at the speaker.

" What did yon say ? "

" You can bear a little more light ? "

" I must bear it, if yon let it in." (Laying the palest shadow of a
stress upon the second word.)

The opened half-door was opened a little further, and secured at
that angle for the time. A broad ray of light fell into the garret, and
showed the workman with an unfinished shoe upon his lap, pausing in
his labour. His few common tools and various scraps of leather were
at his feet and on his bench. He had a white beard, raggedly cut, but
not very long, a hollow face, and exceedingly bright eyes. The hollow-
ncss and thinness of his face would have caused them to look lai-ge,
under his yet dark eyebrows and his confused white hair, thougli they
had been really otherwise ; but, they were naturally large, and looked
unnaturally so. His yellow rags of shirt lay open at the throat, and
showed his body to be withered and worn. He, and his old canvas
frock, and his loose stockings, and all his poor tatters of clothes, had,
in a long seclusion from direct light and air, faded down to such a
dull uniformity of parchment-yellow, that it would have been hard to
say which was which.

He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, and the very
bones of it seemed transparent. So he sat, with a steadfastly vacant
gaze, pausing in his work. He never looked at the figure before him,
without first looking down on this side of himself, then on that, as if
he had lost the habit of associating place with sound ; he never spoke,
without first wandering in this manner, and forgetting to speak.

" Are you going to finish that pair of shoes to-day ? " asked Defarge,
motioning to Mr. Lorry to come forward.

" What did you say ? "

" Do yon mean to finish that pair of shoes to-day ? "

" I can't say that I mean to. I suppose so. I don't know."

But, the question reminded him of his work, and he bent over it
again.

Mr. Lorry came silently forward, leaving the daughter by the door.
When lie had stood, for a minute or two, by the side of Defarge, the
slioemaker looked up. He showed no surprise at seeing another
figure, but the unsteady fingers of one of his hands strayed to his lips
as he looked at it (his lips and his nails were of the same pale lead-
colour), and then the hand dropped to his work, and he once more
bent over the shoe. The look and the action had occupied but an
instant.

" You have a visitor, yon see," said Jlongieur Defarge.

2b

3/0 A Tale of Tzvo Cities.

" What did you say ? "

*' Hero is a visitor."

The shocmakor looked up as before, but without removing a hand
from his work.

" Come ! " said Defargc. " Here is monsieur, who knows a well-
made shoe when he sees one. Show him that sboo you are working
at. Take it, monsieur."

Mr. Lorry took it in his hand.

" Toll monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and the maker's name."

There was a longer pause than usual, before the shoemaker replied :

" I forget what it was you asked mo. What did you say ? "

" I said, couldn't you describe the kind of shoe, for monsieur's
information ? "

" It is a lady's shoe. It is a young lady's walking-shoe. It is in
the present mode. I never saw the mode. I have had a pattern in
my hand." He glanced at the shoe with some little passing touch of
pride.

" And the maker's name ? " said Defarge.

Now that he had no work to hold, he laid the knuckles of the right
hand in the hollow of the left, and then the knuckles of the left hand
in the hollow of the right, and then passed a hand across his boarded
chin, and so on in regular changes, without a moment's intermission.
The task of recalling him from the vacancy into which he always
sank when he had spoken, was like recalling some very weak person
from a swoon, or endeavouring, in the hope of some disclosure, to stay
the spirit of a fast-dying man.

" Did you ask me for my name ? "

" Assuredly I did."

" One Hundred and Five, North Tower."

"Is that all?"

" One Hundred and Five, North Tower."

With a weary sound that was not a sigh, nor a groan, he bent to
work again, until the silence was again broken.

"You are not a shoemaker by trade?" said Mr. Lorry, looking
steadfastly at him.

His haggard eyes turned to Defarge as if he woitld have transferred
the question to him : but as no help came from that quarter, they
turned back on the questioner when they had sought the ground.

" I am not a shoemaker by trade ? No, I was not a shoemaker by
trade. I — I learnt it here. I taught myself. I asked leave to "

He lapsed away, even for minutes, ringing those measured changes
on his hands the whole time. His eyes came slowly back, at last, to
the face from which they had wandered ; when they rested on it, lie
started, and resumed, in the manner of a slcoijcr that moment awake,
reverting to a subject of last night.

" I asked leave to teach myself, and I got it Avith much difficolty
after a long while, and I have made shoes over since."

A Gleafii of Intelligence. 371

As he held out his hand for the shoe that had been taken from him,
Mr. Lorry said, still looking steadfastly in his face :

" Monsieur Manettc, do you remember nothing of me ? "

The shoe dropped to the ground, and he sat looking fixedly at tho
questioner.

" Monsieur Manette ; " Mr. Lorry laid his hand upon Defargc's
arm ; " do you remember nothing of this man ? Look at him. Look
at me. Is there no old banker, no old business, no old servant, no
old time, rising in your mind, Monsieur Manette ? "

As the captive of many years sat looking fixedly, by turns, at Mr.
Lorry and at Defarge, some long obliterated marks of an actively
intent intelligence in the middle of the forehead, gradually forced
themselves through the black mist that had fallen on him. They
were overclouded again, they were fainter, they were gone ; but they
had been there. And so exactly was the expression repeated on tho
fair young face of her who had crept along the wall to a point where
she could see him, and where she now stood looking at him, with
hands which at first had been only raised in frightened compassion, if
not even to keep him off and shut out the sight of him, but which
were now extending towards him, trembling with eagerness to lay
the spectral face upon her warm young breast, and love it back to life
and hope — so exactly was the expression repeated (though in stronger
characters) on her fair young face, that it looked as though it had
passed like a moving light, from him to her.

Darkness had fallen on him in its place. He looked at the two,
less and less attentively, and his eyes in gloomy abstraction sought
the ground and looked about him in the old way. Finally, with a
deep long sigh, he took tho shoe up, and resumed his work.

" Have you recognised him, monsieur ? " asked Defarge in a whisper.

" Yes ; for a moment. At first I thought it quite hopeless, but I
have unquestionably seen, for a single moment, the face that I once
knew so well. Hush ! Let us draw further back. Hush ! "

She had moved from the wall of the garret, very near to the bench
on which he sat. There was something awful in his unconsciousness
of the figure that could have put out its hand and touched him as ho
stooped over his labour.

Not a word was spoken, not a sound was made. She stood, like a
spirit, beside him, and he bent over his work.

It happened, at length, that ho had occasion to change the instru-
ment in his hand, for his shoemaker's knife. It lay on that side of
him which was not the side on which she stood. He had taken it up,
and was stooping to work again, when his eyes caught the skirt of her
dress. He raised them, and saw her face. The two spectators started
forward, but she stayed thorn with a motion of her hand. She had no
fear of his striking at her with the knife, though they had.

He stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while his lips
bogan to form some words, though no sound proceeded from them.

372 A Tale of Two Cities.

By degrees, in the pauses of his quick and laboured breathing, he was
heard to say ;

" What is this ? "

With the tears streaming down her face, she put her two hands to
her lips, and kissed them to him ; then clasped them on her breast,
as if she laid his ruined head there.

" You are not the gaoler's daughter ? "

She sighed " No."
■ " Who are you ? "

Not yet trusting the tones of her voice, she sat down on the bench
beside him. He recoiled, but she laid her hand upon his arm. A
strange thrill struck him when she did so, and visibly passed over his
frame ; he laid the knife down softly, as he sat staring at her.

Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had been hurriedly
pushed aside, and fell down over her neck. Advancing his hand by
little and little, he took it up and looked at it. In the midst of the
action he went astray, and, with another deep sigh, fell to work at his
shoemaking.

But not for long. Eeleasing his arm, she laid her hand upon his
shoulder. After looking doubtfully at it, two or three times, as if to
be sure that it was really there, he laid down his work, put his hand
to his neck, and took off a blackened string with a scrap of folded rag
attached to it. He opened this, carefully, on his knee, and it contained
a very little quantity of hair : not more than one or two long golden
hairs, which he had, in some old day, wound off upon his finger.

He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it.
" It is the same. How can it be ! When was it ! How was it ! "

As the concentrating expression returned to his forehead, he seemed
to become conscious that it was in hers too. He turned her full to
the light, and looked at her.

" She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was
summoned out — she had a fear of my going, though I had none — and
when I was brought to the North Tower they found these upon my
sleeve. 'You will leave me them? They can never help me to
escape in the body, though they may in the spirit.' Those were the
words I said. I remember them very well."

Ho formed this speech with his lips many times before he could
litter it. But when he did find spoken words for it, they came to him
coherently, though slowly.

" How was this ? — Was it you ? "

Once more, the two spectators started, as he turned upon her with
a frightful suddenness. But she sat perfectly still in his grasp, and
only said, in a low voice, " I entreat you, good gentlemen, do not come
near us, do not speak, do not move ! "

" Hark ! " he exclaimed. " Whoso voice was that ? "

His hands released her as he uttered this cry, and went up to his
T^yhite hair, which they tore in a frenzy. It died out, as everything

^
I

^

5^

^^

'i^ • 'V

Fatlier and Daughter. 373

bat his shoomaking did die out of him, aud he refolded his little
packet and tried to secure it in his breast ; but he still looked at her,
and gloomily shook his head.

" No, no, no ; you are too young, too blooming. It can't be. See
what the prisoner is. These are not the hands she knew, this is not
the face she knew, this is not a voice she ever heard. No, no. She
was — and He was — before the slow years of the North Tower— ages
ago. What is your name, my gentle angel ? "

Hailing his softened tone and manner, his daughter fell upon her
knees before him, with her appealing hands upon his breast.

" 0, sir, at another time you shall know my name, and who my
mother was, and who my father, and how I never knew their hard,
haid history. But I cannot tell you at this time, and I cannot tell
you here. All that I may tell you, hero and now, is, that I pray to
you to touch me and to bless me. Kiss me, kiss me ! 0 my dear,
my dear ! "

His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed
and lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him.

" If you hear in my voice — I don't know that it is so, but I hope it
is — if you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that once was
sweet music in your ears, weep for it, weep for it ! If you touch, in
touching my hair, anything that recalls a beloved head that lay on
your breast when you were young and free, weep for it, weep for it !
If, when I hint to you of a Home that is before us, where I will be
true to you with all my duty and with all my faithful service, I bring
back the remembrance of a Home long desolate, while your poor
heart pined away, weep for it, weep for it ! "

She held him closer round the neck, and rocked him on her breast
like a child.

" If, when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, and that
I have come here to take you from it, and that we go to England to
be at peace and at rest, I cause you to think of your useful life laid
waste, and of our native France so wicked to you, weep for it, weep
for it ! And if, when I shall tell you of my name, and of my father
who is living, and of my mother who is dead, you learn that I have to
kneel to my honoured father, and implore bis pardon for having never
for his sake striven all day and lain awake and wept all night, because
the love of my poor mother hid his torture from me, weep for it,
weep for it ! Weep for her, then, and for me ! Good gentlemen,
thank God ! I feel his sacred tears upon my face, and his sobs strike
against my heart. O, see ! Thank God for us, thank God ! "

He had sunk in her arms, and his face dropped on her breast : a
sight so touching, yet so terrible in the tremendous wrong and suffer-
ing which had gone before it, that tie two beholders covered their
faces.

When the quiet of the garret had been long undisturbed, and his
heaving breast and shaken form had long yielded to the calm that

374 -^ Tale of Ttvo Cities.

must follow all storms — emblem to humanity, of the rest and silence
into which the storm called Life must hush at last — they came
forward to raise the father and daughter from the ground. He had
gradually dropped to the floor, and lay there in a lethargy, worn out.
She had nestled down with him, that his head might lie upon her
arm ; and her hair drooping over him curtained him from the light.

"If, without disturbing him," she said, raising her hand to Mr.
Lorry as he stooped over them, after repeated blowings of his nose,
" all could be arranged for our leaving Paris at once, so that, from the
very door, he could bo taken away "

" But, consider. Is he fit for the journey ?" asked Mr. Lorry.

" More fit for that, I think, than to remain in this city, so dreadful
to him."

" It is true," said Defarge, who was kneeling to look on and hear.
" More than that ; Monsieur Manette is, for all reasons, best out of
France. Say, shall I hire a carriage and post-horses ? "

" That's business," said Mr. Lorry, resuming on the shortest notice
his methodical manners ; " and if business is to be done, I had better
do it."

" Then be so kind," urged Miss Manette, " as to leave us here. You
Bee how composed he has become, and you cannot be afraid to leave
him with mo now. Why should you be ? If you will lock the door
to secure us from interruption, I do not doubt that you will find him,
when you come back, as quiet as you leave him. In any case, I will
take care of him until you return, and then we mil remove him
straight."

Both Mr. Lorry and Defarge were rather disinclined to this course,
and in favour of one of them remaining. But, as there were not
only carriage and horses to bo seen to, but travelling papers ; and as
time pressed, for the day was drawing to an end,' it came at last to
their hastUy dividing the business that was necessary to be done, and
hurrying away to do it.

Then, as the darkness closed in, the daughter laid her head down
on the hard ground close at the father's side, and watched him. The
darkness deepened and deepened, and they both lay quiet, until a
light gleamed through the chinks in the wall.

Mr. Lorry and Monsieur Defarge had made all ready for the
journey, and had brought with them, besides travelling cloaks and
wrappers, bread and meat, wine, and hot coffee. Monsieur Defarge
put this provender, and the lamp he carried, on the shoemaker's bench
(there was nothing else in the garret but a pallet bed), and he and
Mr. Lorry roused the captive, and assisted him to his feet.

No human intelligence could have read the mysteries of his mind,
in the scared blank wonder of his face. Whether he knew what had
happened, whether he recollected what they had said to him, whether
ho knew that he was free, were questions which no sagacity could
have solved. They tried speaking to him ; but, he was so confused,

One Hundred and Five, North Tower. 375

and 60 very slow to answer, that they took fright at his bewilderment,
and agreed for the time to tamper with him no more. He had a wild,
lost manner of occasionally clasping his head in his hands, that had
not been seen in him before ; yet, he had some pleasure in the mere
sound of his daughter's voice, and invariably turned to it when she
spoke.

In the submissive way of one long accustomed to obey under
coercion, ho ate and drank what tliey gave him to cat and drink, and
put on the cloak and other wrappings, that they gave him to wear.
He readily responded to his daughter's drawing her arm through his,
and took — and kept — her hand in both his own.

They began to descend ; Monsieur Defarge going first with tho
lamp, Mr. Lorry closing the little procession. They had not traversed
many steps of tho long main staircase when he stopped, and stared at
tho roof and round at the walls.

" You remember the place, my father ? You remember coming up
here ? "

"What did you say?"

But, before she could repeat the question, he murmured an answer
as if she had repeated it.

" Eemember ? No, I don't remember. It was so very long ago."

That he had no recollection whatever of his having been brought
from his prison to that house, was apparent to them. They heard
him mutter, " One Hundred and Five, North Tower ; " and when he
looked about him, it evidently was for the strong fortress-walls which
had long encompassed, him. On their reaching the court-yard ho
instinctively altered his tread, as being in expectation of a draw-
bridge ; and when there was no drawbridge, and he saw the carriage
waiting in tho open street, he dropped his daughter's hand and clasped
his head again.

No crowd was about the door ; no people were discernible at any
of the many windows ; not even a chance passer-by was in the street.
An unnatui-al silence and desertion reigned there. Only one soul was
to be seen, and that was Madame Defarge — who leaned against the
door-post, knitting, and saw nothing.

The prisoner had got into a coach, and his daughter had followed
him, when Mr. Lorry's feet were arrested on the step by his asking,
miserably, for his shoemaking tools and the unfinished shoes. Madame
Defarge immediately called to her husband that she would get them,
and went, knitting, out of the lamplight, through the court-yard. She
quickly brought them down and handed them in ; — and immediately
afterwards leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing.

Defarge got upon the box, and gave the word " To the Barrier ! "
The postilion cracked his whip, and they clattered away under the
feeble over-swinging lamps.

Under the over-swinging lamps — swinging ever brighter in the
better streets, and ever dimmer in the worse — and by lighted shops.

3/6 A Tale of Tivo Cities.

gay crowds, illuminated coffee-houses, and theatre-doors, to one of the
city gates. Soldiers with lanterns, at the guard-house there. *' Your
papers, travellers ! " " See hero then, Monsieur the Officer," said
Defarge, getting down, and taking him gravely apart, " these are the
papers of monsieur inside, with the white head. They were consigned

to me, with him, at the " He dropped his voice, there was a

flutter among the military lanterns, and one of them being handed
iuto the coach by an arm in uniform, the eyes connected with the arm
looked, not an every day or an every night look, at monsieur with the
white head. " It is well. Forward ! " from the uniform. " Adieu ! "
from Defarge. And so, under a short grove of feebler and feebler
over-swinging lamps, out under the great grove of stars.

Beneath that arch of unmoved and eternal lights ; some, so remote
from this little earth that the learned tell us it is doubtful whether
their rays have even yet discovered it, as a point in space where any-
thing is suffered or done : the shadows of the night were broad and
black. All through the cold and restless interval, until dawn, they
once more whispered in the ears of Mr. Jarvis Lorry — sitting opposite
the buried man who had been dug out, and wondering what subtle
powers were for ever lost to him, and what were capable of restoration
— the old inquiry :

" I hope you care to be recalled to life ? "

And the old answer :

" I can't say."

THE END OF TUE PlKST BOOK.

BOOK THE SECOND. THE GOLDEN THREAD.

CHAPTER I.

FIVE YEAUS LATKB.

Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in
the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small,
very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned
place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the
House were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its
ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful
of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express con-
viction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable.
This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed
at more convenient places of business. Tellson's (they said) wanted
no elbow-room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted no
embellishment. Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks Brothers' might ;
but Tellson's, thank Heaven !

Any one of these partners would have disinherited his son on the
question of rebuilding Tellson's. In this respect the House was
much on a par with the Country ; which did very often disinherit its
sons for suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long
been highly objectionable, but were only the more respectable.

Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's was the triumphant per-
fection of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idiotic
obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson's
down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop,
with two little counters, where the oldest of men made your cheque
shake as if the wind rustled it, while they examined the signature by
the dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-bath of
mud from Fleet-street, and which were made the dingier by theii*
own iron bars proper, and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If your
business necessitated your seeing " the House," you were put into a
species of Condemned Hold at the back, where you meditated on a
misspent life, until the House came with its hands in its pockets, and

378 A Tale of Tzuo Cities.

you could hardly blink at it in the dismal twilight. Your money
came out of, or went into, wormy old wooden drawers, particles of
■which flew up your nose and down your throat when they were opened
and shut. Your bank-notes had a musty odour, as if they were fast
decomposing into rags again. Your plate was stowed away among
the neighbouring cesspools, and evil communications corrupted its good
polish in a day or two. Your deeds got into extemporised strong-
rooms made of kitchens and sculleries, and fretted all the fat out of
their parchments into the banking-house air. Your lighter boxes of
family papers went up-stairs into a Barmecide room, that always had
a great dining-table in it and never had a dinner, and where, even in
the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty, the first letters
written to you by your old love, or by your little children, were but
newly released from the horror of being ogled through the windows,
by the heads exposed on Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and
ferocity worthy of Abyssinia or Ashantee.

But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in
vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all w4th Tell-
son's. Death is Nature's remedy for all things, and why not Legisla-
tion's ? Accordingly, the forger was put to Death ; the utterer of a
bad note was put to Death ; the unlawful opener of a letter was put
to Death ; the purloiner of forty shillings and sixpence was put to
Death ; the holder of a horse at Tellson's door, who made off with it,
was put to Death ; the coiner of a bad shilling was put to Death ; the
sounders of three-fourths of the notes in the whole gamut of Crime,
were put to Death. Not that it did the least good in the way of pre-
vention— it might almost have been worth remarking that the fact
was exactly the reverse — but, it cleared off (as to this world) the
trouble of each particular case, and left nothing else connected with
it to be looked after. Thus Tellson's, in its day, like greater places
of business, its contemporaries, had taken so many lives, that, if the
heads laid low before it had been ranged on Temple Bar instead of
being privately disposed of, they would probably have excluded what
little light the ground floor had, in a rather significant manner.

Cramped in all kinds of dim cujiboards and hutches at Tellson's,
the oldest of men carried on the business gravely. "When they took
a young man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere
till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until
he had the full Tollson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then
only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large
books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the genei-al weight of
the establishment.

Outside Tellson's — never by any means in it, unless called in — was
an odd-job-man, an occasional porter and messenger, who served as
the live sign of the house. He was never absent during business
hours, unless upon an errand, and then he was represented by his
Bon : a grisly xurchin of twelve, who was his express image. People

Jerry Cruncher at Home, 379

understood that Tellson's, in a stately way, tolerated the odd-job-man.
The house had always tolerated some person in that capacity, and
time and tide had drifted this person to the post. His surname was
Cruncher, and on the youthful occasion of his renouncing by proxy
the works of darkness, in the easterly parish church of Houndsditch,
he liad received the added appellation of Jerry.

The scene was Mr. Cruncher's private lodging in Hanging-sword
Alley, Whitefriai-s : the time, half-past seven of the clock on a windy
March morning. Anno Domini seventeen hundred and eiglity. (Mr.
(,'runcher himself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna
Dominoes : apparently under the impression that the Christian era
dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had
bestowed her name upon it.)

Mr. Cruncher's apartments were not in a savoury neighbourhood,
and were but two in number, even if a closet with a single pane of
glass in it might bo counted as one. But they were very decently
kept. Early as it was, on the windy March morning, the room in
which ho lay a-bed was already scrubbed throughout ; and between
the cups and saucers arranged for breakfast, and the lumbering deal
table, a very clean white cloth was spread.

Mr. Cruncher reposed under a patchwork counterpane, like a
Harlequin at home. At first, he slept heavily, but, by degrees, began
to roll and surge in bed, until he rose above the surface, with his spiky
hair looking as if it must tear the sheets to ribbons. At which
juncture, he exclaimed, in a voice of dire exasperation ;

" Bust me, if she ain't at it agin ! "

A woman of orderly and industrious appearance rose from her
knees in a corner, with sufficient haste and trepidation to show that
slie was the person referred to.

" What ! " said Mr. Cruncher, looking out of bed for a boot.
" You're at it agin, are you ? "

After hailing the morn with this second salutation, he threw a boot
at the woman as a third. It was a very muddy boot, and may intro-
duce the odd circumstance connected with Mr. Cruncher's domestic
economy, that, whereas he often came home after banking houi-s with
clean boots, he often got up next morning to find the same boots
covered with clay.

" What," said Mr. Cruncher, varying his apostrophe after missing
his mark — " what are you up to, Aggerawayter ? "

" I was only saying my prayers."

" Saying your prayers ! You're a nice woman 1 What do you
mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me ? "

" I was not praying against you ; I was praying for you."

" You weren't. And if you were, I won't be took the liberty with.
Here ! your mother's a nice woman, young Jerry, going a praying
agin your father's prosperity. You've got a dutiful mother, you have,
my son. You've got a religious mother, you have, my boy: going

380 A Tale of Two Cities.

and flopping herself down, and praying that the bread-and-butter may
be snatched out of the mouth of her only child."

Master Cruncher (who was in his shirt) took this very ill, and,
turning to his mother, strongly deprecated any praying away of his
personal board.

" And what do ' you suppose, you conceited female," said Mr.
Cruncher, with unconscious inconsistency, " that the worth of your
prayers may be ? Name the price that you put your prayers at ! "

" They only come from the heart, Jerry. They arc worth no more
than that."

" Worth no more than that," repeated Mr. Cruncher. " They ain't
worth much, then. Whether or no, I won't be prayed agin, I tell
you. I can't afford it. I'm not a going to be made unlucky by your
sneaking. If you must go flopping yourself down, flop in favour of
your husband and child, and not in opposition to 'em. If I had had
any but a xinnat'ral wife, and this poor boy had had any but a unnat'ral
mother, I might have made some money last week instead of being
counterprayed and countermined and religiously circumwented into
the worst of luck. B-u-u-ust me ! " said Mr. Crunclier, who all this
time had been putting on his clothes, " if I ain't, what with piety and
one blowed thing and another, been choused this last week into as bad
luck as ever a poor devil of a honest tradesman met with ! Young
Jerry, dress yourself, my boy, and while I clean my boots keep a eye
upon your mother now and then, and if you see any signs of moro
flopping, give me a call. I'or, I tell you," here he addressed his wife
once more, " I won't be gone agin, in this manner. I am as rickety
as a hackney-coach, I'm as sleepy as laudanum, my lines is strained
to that degree that I shouldn't know, if it wasn't for the pain in 'em,
which was me and which somebody else, yet I'm none the better for
it in pocket ; and it's my suspicion that you've been at it from morn-
ing to night to prevent me from being the better for it in pocket, and
I won't put up ^vith it, Aggerawayter, and what do you say now ! "

Growling, in addition, such phrases as " Ah ! yes ! You're religious,
too. You wouldn't put yourself in opposition to the interests of your
husband and child, would you ? Not you ! " and throwing off other
sarcastic sparks from the whirling grindstone of his indignation, Mr.
Cruncher betook himself to his boot-cleaning and his general prepara-
tion for business. In the meantime, his son, whose head was garnished
with tenderer spikes, and whose young eyes stood close by one another,
as his father's did, kept the required watch upon his mother. He
greatly disturbed that poor woman at intervals, by darting out of his
sleeping closet, where he made his toilet, with a suppressed cry of
" You are going to flop, mother. — Halloa, father ! " and, after raising
this fictitious alarm, darting in agaia with an undutiful grin.

Mr. Cruncher's temper was not at all improved when he came to
his breakfast. He resented Mrs. Cruncher's saying gi*ace with par-
ticular animosity.

Jerry at his Post. 381

" Now, Aggorawaytcr ! What are yon up to ? At it agin ? "

His wife explained that she had merely " asked a blessing."

" Don't do it ! " said Mr. Cmncher, looking about, as if he rather
expected to see the loaf disappear under the efficacy of his wife's
petitions. " I ain't a going to bo blest out of house and home. I won't
have my wittles blest oflf my table. Keep still ! "

Exceedingly red-eyed and grim, as if he had been up all night at a
party which had taken anything but a convivial turn, Jerry Cruncher
worried his breakfast rather than ate it, growling over it like any
four-footed inmate of a menagerie. Towards nine o'clock he smoothed
his ruflSed aspect, and, presenting as respectable and business-like an
exterior as he could overlay his natural self with, issued forth to the
occupation of the day.

It could scarcely bo called a trade, in spite of his favourite descrip-
tion of himself as " a honest tradesman." His stock consisted of a
wooden stool, made out of a broken-backed chair cut down, which
stool, young Jerry, v/alking at his father's side, carried every morn-
ing to beneath the banking-house window that was nearest Temple
Bar : where, with the addition of the first handful of straw that could
be gleaned from any passing vehicle to keep the cold and wet from
the odd-job-man's feet, it formed the encampment for the day. On
this post of his, Mr. Cruncher was as well known to Fleet Street
and the Templo, as the Bar itself, — and was almost as ill-looking.

Encamped at a quarter before nine, in good time to touch his three-
cornered hat to the oldest of men as they passed in to Tellson's,
Jerry took up his station on this windy March morning, with young
Jerry standing by him, when not engaged in making forays through
the Bar, to inflict bodily and mental injuries of an acute description
on passing boys who were small enough for his amiable purpose.
Father and son, extremely like each other, looking silently on at the
morning traffic in Fleet Street, with their two heads as near to one
another as the two eyes of each were, bore a considerable resemblance
to a pair of monkeys. The resemblance was not lessened by the
accidental circumstance, that the mature Jerry bi* and spat out straw,
while the twinkling eyes of the youthful Jerry were as restlessly
watchful of him as of everything else in Fleet Street.

The head of one of the regular indoor messengers attached to
Tellson's establishment was put through the door, and the word was
given :

" Porter wanted ! "

" Hooray, father ! Here's an early job to begin with ! "

Having thus given his parent God speed, young Jerry seated him-
self on the stool, entered on his reversionary interest in the straw his
father had been chewing, and cogitated.

•' Al-ways rusty ! His fingers is al-ways rusty ! " muttered young
Jerry. " Where does my father get all that iron rust from f H9
don't get no iron rust here I "

CHAPTER II.

A SIGHT.

•' You know the Old Bailey well, no doubt ? " said one of the oldest of
clerks to Jerry the messenger.

"Ye-es, sir," returned Jerry, in something of a dogged manner.
" I do know the Bailey."

" Just so. And you know Mi*. Lorry."

"I know Mr, Lorry, sir, much better than I know the Bailey.
Much better," said Jerry, not unlike a reluctant witness at the estab-
lishment in question, " than I, as a honest tradesman, wish to know
the Bailey."

" Very well. Find the door where the witnesses go in, and show
the door-keeper this note for Mr. Lorry. He will then let you in."

" Into the court, sir ? "

" Into the court."

Mr. Cruncher's eyes seemed to get a little closer to one another,
and to interchange the inquiry, " What do you think of this ? "

" Am I to wait in the court, sir ? " he asked, as the result of that
conference.

" I am going to tell you. The door-keeper will pass the note to
Mr. Lorry, and do you make any gesture that will attract Mr. Lorry's
attention, and show him where you stand. Then what you have to
do, is, to remain there until he wants you."

" Is that all, sir ? "

" That's all. He wishes to have a messenger at hand. This is to
tell him you are there."

As the ancient clerk deliberately folded and superscribed the note,
Mr. Cruncher, after siu'veying him in silence until he came to the
blotting-paper stage, remarked :

" I suppose they'll be trying Forgeries this morning ? "

« Treason ! "

" That's quartering," said Jerry. " Barbarous ! "

" It is the law," remarked the ancient clerk, turning his surprised
spectacles upon him. " It is the law."

" It's hard in the law to spile a man, I think. It's hard enough to
kill him, but it's wery bard to spile him, sir."

" Not at all," returned the ancient clerk. " Speak well of the law.
Take care of your chest and voice, my good friend, and leave the law
to take care of itself. I give you that advice."

"It's the damp, sir, what settles on my chest and voice," said
Jerry. " I leave you to judge what a damp way of earning a living
mine is."

" Well, well," said the old clerk ; " we all have our various ways of

The Infallible Old Bailey. 383

gaining a livelihood. Some of us have damp ways, and some of ns
have dry ways. Hero is the letter. Go along."

Jerry took the letter, and, remarking to himself with less internal
deference than he made an outward show of, " You are a lean old one,
too," made his bow, informed his son, in passing, of his destination,
and went his way.

They hanged at Tyburn, in those days, so the street outside New-
gate had not obtained one infamous notoriety that has since attached
to it. But, the gaol was a vile place, in which most kinds of
debauchei-y and villainy were practised, and where dire diseases wero
bred, that came into court with the prisoners, and sometimes rushed
straight from the dock at my Lord Chief Justice himself, and pulled
him off the bench. It had more than once happened, that the Judge
in the black cap pronounced his own doom as certainly as the
prisoner's, and even died before him. For the rest, the Old Bailey
was famous as a kind of deadly inn-yard, from which pale travellers
set out continually, in carts and coaches, on a violent passage into the
other world : traversing some two miles and a half of public street
and road, and shaming few good citizens, if any. So powerful is use,
and so desirable to be good use in the beginning. It was famous, too,
for the pillory, a wise old institution, that inflicted a punishment of
which no one could foresee the extent ; also, for the whipping-post,
another dear old institution, very humanising and softening to behold
in action ; also, for extensive transactions in blood-money, another
fragment of ancestral wisdom, systematically leading to the most
frightful mercenary* crimes that could be committed under Heaven.
Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice illustration of
the precept, that " Whatever is is right ; " an aphorism that would be
as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence,
that nothing that ever was, was wrong. - -*

Making his way through the tainted crowd, dispersed up and down
this hideous scene of action, with the skill of a man accustomed to
make his way quietly, the messenger found out the door he sought,
and handed in his letter through a trap in it. For, people then paid
to see the play at the Old Bailey, just as they paid to see the play in
Bedlam — only the former entertainment was much the dearer. There-
fore, all the Old Bailey doors were well guarded — except, indeed, the
social doors by which the criminals got there, and those were always
left wide open.

After some delay and demur, the door grudgingly turned on its
hinges a very little way, and allowed Mr. Jerry Cruncher to squeeze
himself into court.

" What's on ? " ho asked, in a whisper, of the man ho found himself
next to.

" Nothing yet."

" What's coming on ? "

" The Treason case."

384 A Tale of Two Cities.

" The quartering one, ch ? "

" Ah ! " returned the man, with a relish ; " he'll bo drawn on a
hurdle to be half hanged, and then he'll be taken down and sliced
before his own face, and then his inside will be taken out and burnt
while he looks on, and then his head will be chopped off, and he'll bo
cut into quarters. That's the sentence."

" If he's found Guilty, you mean to say ? " Jerry added, by way of
proviso.

"Oh! they'll find him guilty," said the other. "Don't you be
afraid of that."

Mr. Cruncher's attention was here diverted to the door-keeper, whom
he saw making his way to Mr. Lorry, with the note in his hand. Mr.
Lorry sat at a table, among the gentlemen in wigs : not far from a
wigged gentleman, the prisoner's counsel, who had a great bundle of
papers before him : and nearly opposite another wigged gentleman
with his hands in his pockets, whose whole attention, when Mr.
Cruncher looked at him then or afterwards, seemed to be concentrated
on the ceiling of the court. After some gruff coughing and rubbing
of his chin and signing with his hand, Jerry attracted the notice of
Mr. Lorry, who had stood up to look for him, and who quietly nodded
and sat down again.

" What's he got to do with the case ? " asked the man he had spoken
with.

" Blest if I know," said Jerry.

" What have you got to do with it, then, if a person may inquire ? "

" Blest if I know that either," said Jerry,

The entrance of the Judge, and a consequent great stir and settling
down in the court, stopped the dialogue. Presently, the dock became
the central point of interest. Two gaolers, who had been standing
there, went out, and the prisoner was brought in, and put to the bar.

Everybody present, except the one wigged gentleman who looked
at the ceiling, stared at him. All the human breath in the place,
rolled at him, like a sea, or a wind, or a fire. Eager faces strained
round pillars and corners, to get a sight of him ; spectators in back
rows stood up, not to miss a hair of him ; people on the floor of the
court, laid their hands on the shoulders of the people before them, to
help themselves, at anybody's cost, to a view of him — stood a-tiptoe,
got upon ledges, stood upon next to nothing, to see every inch of him.
Conspicuous among these latter, like an animated bit of the spiked wall
of Newgate, Jerry stood : aiming at the prisoner the beery breath of a
whet he had taken as ho came along, and discharging it to mingle
with the waves of other beer, and gin, and tea, and coffee, and what
not, that flowed at him, and already broke upon the great windows
behind him in an impure mist and rain.

The object of all this staring and blaring, was a young man of
about five-and-twenty, well-grown and well-looking, with a sunburnt
cheek and a dark eye. His condition was that pf a young gentlemaq.

Attainted of High Treason. 385

He was plainly dressed in black, or very dark grey, and his hair,
which was long and dark, was gathered in a ribbon at the back of his
neck ; more to be out of his way than for ornament. As an emotion
of the mind will express itself through any covering of the body, so
the paleness which his situation engendered came through the brown
upon his cheek, showing the soul to be stronger than the sun. He
was otherwise quite self-possessed, bowed to the Judge, and stood
quiet.

The sort of interest with which this man was stared and breathed
at, was not a sort that elevated humanity. Had he stood in peril of a
less horrible sentence — had there been a chance of any one of its savage
details being spared — by just so much would he have lost in his
fascination. The form that was to be doomed to be so shamefully
mangled was the sight; the immortal creature that was to be so
butchered and torn asunder, yielded the sensation. Whatever gloss
the various spectators put upon the interest, according to their several
arts and powers of self-deceit, the interest was, at the root of it,
Ogreish.

Silence in the court ! Charles Darnay had yesterday pleaded Not
Guilty to an indictment denouncing him (with infinite jingle and
jangle) for that he was a false traitor to our serene, illustrious, ex-
cellent, and so forth, prince, our Lord the King, by reason of his
having, on divers occasions, and by divers means and ways, assisted
Lewis, the French King, in his wars against our said serene, illustrious,
excellent, and so forth ; that was to say, by coming and going, between
the dominions of our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth,
and those of the said French Lewis, and wickedly, falsely, traitorously,
and otherwise evil-adverbiously, revealing to the said French Lewis
what forces our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, had in
preparation to send to Canada and North America. This much, Jerry,
with his head becoming more and more spiky as the law terms bristled
it, made out with huge satisfaction, and so arrived circuitously at the
understanding that the aforesaid, and over and over again aforesaid,
Charles Darnay, stood there before him upon his trial ; that the jury
were swearing in ; and that Mr. Attorney-General was making ready
to speak.

The accused, who was (and who knew he was) being mentally
hanged, beheaded, and quartered, by everybody there, neither flinched
from the situation, nor assumed any theatrical air in it. He was
quiet and attentive ; watched the opening proceedings with a grave
interest ; and stood with his hands resting on the slab of wood before
him, so composedly, that they had not displaced a leaf of the herbs
with which it was strewn. The court was all bestrewn with herbs
and sprinkled with vinegar, as a precaution against gaol air and gaol
fever.

Over the prisoner's head there was a mirror, to throw the light
down upon him. Crowds of the wicked and the wretched had been

2 o

386 A Tale of Tzvo Cities.

reflected in it, and had passed from its surface and this earth's together.
Haunted in a most ghastly manner that abominable place would have
been, if the glass could ever have rendered back its reflections, as the
ocean is one day to give up its dead. Some j)assing thought of the
infamy and disgrace for which it had been reserved, may have struck
the prisoner's mind. Be that as it may, a change in his position
makmg him conscious of a bar of light across his face, he looked up ;
and when ho saw the glass his face flushed, and his right hand pushed
the herbs away.

It happened, that the action turned his face to that side of the court
which was on his left. About on a level with his eyes, there sat, in
that corner of the Judge's bench, two persons upon whom his look
immediately rested ; so immediately, and so much to the changing of
his aspect, that all the eyes that were turned upon him, turned to
them.

The spectators saw in the two figures, a young lady of little moro
than twenty, and a gentleman who was evidently her father ; a man
of a very remarkable appearance in respect of the absolute whiteness
of his hail', and a certain indescribable intensity of face : not of an
active kind, but pondering and self-communing. When this expression
was upon him, he looked as if he were old ; but when it was stirred
and broken up — as it was now, in a moment, on his speaking to his
daughter — he became a handsome man, not past the prime of life.

His daughter had one of her hands drawn through his arm, as she
sat by him, and the other pressed upon it. She had drawn close to
him, in her dread of the scene, and in her pity for the prisoner. Her
forehead had been strikingly expressive of an engrossing terror and
compassion that saw nothing but the peril of the accused. This had
been so very noticeable, so very powerfully and natui-ally shown, that
starers who had had no pity for him were touched by her ; and the
whisper went about, " Who are they ? "

Jerry, the messenger, who had made his own observations, in his
own manner, and who had been sucking the rust off his fingers in his
absorption, stretched his neck to hear who they were. The crowd
about him had pressed and passed the inquiry on to the nearest
attendant, and from him it had been more slowly pressed and passed
back ; at last it got to Jerry :

" Witnesses."

« For which side ? "

" Against."

" Against what side ? "

" The prisoner's."

The Judge, whose eyes had gone in the general direction, recalled
them, leaned back in his seat, and looked steadily at the man whose
life was in his hand, as Mr. Attorney-General rose to spin the rope,
grind the axe, and hammer the nails into the scaffold.

CHAPTER III

A DISAPPOINTMENT.

Mb. Attobnet-General had to inform the jury, that the prisoner
before them, though young in years, was old in the treasonable
practices which claimed the forfeit of Lis life. That this corre-
spondence with the public enemy was not a correspondence of to-day,
or of yesterday, or even of last year, or of the year before. That, it
was certain the prisoner had, for longer than that, been in the habit
of passing and repassing between Franco and England, on secret
business of which he conld give no honest account. That, if it were
in the nature of traitorous ways to thrive (which happily it never
was), the real wickedness and guilt of his business might have remained
nndiscovered. That Providence, however, had put it into the heart
of a person who was beyond fear and beyond reproach, to ferret out
the nature of the prisoner's schemes, and, struck with hoiTor, to dis-
close them to his Majesty's Chief Secretary of State and most honour-
able Privy Council. That, this patriot would be produced before
them. That, his position and attitude were, on the whole, sublime.
That, he had been the prisoner's friend, but, at once in an auspicious
and an evil hour detecting his infamy, had resolved to immolate the
traitor he could no longer cherish in his bosom, on the sacred altar of
his country. That, if statues were decreed in Britain, as in ancient
Greece and Rome, to public benefactors, this shining citizen would
assuredly have had one. That, as they were not so decreed, he
probably would not have one. That, Virtue, as had been observed by
the poets (in many passages which he well knew the jury would have,
word for word, at the tips of their tongues ; whereat the jury's
countenances displayed a guilty consciousness that they knew nothing
about the passages), was in a manner contagious ; more especially the
bright virtue known as patriotism, or love of country. That, the lofty
example of this immaculate and unimpeachable witness for the Crown,
to refer to whom however unworthily was an honour, had communicated
itself to the prisoner's servant, and had engendered in him a holy
determination to examine his master's table-drawers and pockets, and
secrete his papers. That, he (Mr. Attorney-General) was prepared
to hear some disparagement attempted of this admirable servant ; but
that, in a general way, he preferred him to his (Mr. Attorney-General's)
brothers and sisters, and honoured him more than his (Mr. Attorney-
General's) father and mother. That, he called with confidence on the
jury to come and do likewise. That, the evidence of these two
witnesses, coupled with the documents of their discovering that
would be produced, would show the prisoner to have been furnished
with lists of his Majesty's forces, and of their disposition and prepara-

388 A Tale of Tivo Cities.

tion, both by sea and land, and would leave no doubt that he had
habitaally conveyed such information to a hostile power. That, these
lists could not be proved to be in the prisoner's handwriting ; but
that it was all the same ; that, indeed, it was rather the better for the
prosecution, as showing the prisoner to be artful in his precautions.
That, the proof would go back five years, and would show the prisoner
already engaged in these pernicious missions, within a few weeks
before the date of the very first action fought between the British
troops and the Americans. That, for these reasons, the jury, being a
loyal jury (as he knew they were), and being a responsible jury (as
they knew they were), must positively find the prisoner Guilty, and
make an end of him, whether they liked it or not. That, they never
could lay their heads upon their pillows ; that, they never could
tolerate the idea of their wives laying their heads upon their pillows ;
that, they never could endure the notion of their children laying their
heads upon their pillows ; in short, that there never more could be,
for them or theirs, any laying of heads upon pillows at all, unless the
prisoner's head was taken off. That head Mr. Attorney-General con-
cluded by demanding of them, in the name of everything he could
think of with a round turn in it, and on the faith of his solemn
asseveration that he already considered the prisoner as good as dead
and gone.

When the Attorney-General ceased, a buzz arose in the court as
if a cloud of great blue-flies were swarming about the prisoner, in
anticipation of what he was soon to become. When toned down again,
the unimpeachable patriot appeared in the witness-box.

Mr. Solicitor-General then, following his leader's lead, examined
the patriot: John Barsad, gentleman, by name. The story of his
pure soul was exactly what Mr. Attorney-General had described it to
be — perhaps, if it had a fault, a little too exactly. Having released
his noble bosom of its burden, he would have modestly withdrawn him-
self, but that the wigged gentleman with the papers before him, sitting
not far from Mr. Lorry, begged to ask him a few questions. The wigged
gentleman sitting opposite, still lookiag at the ceiling of the court.

Had he ever been a spy himself ? No, he scorned the base insinua- '
tion. What did he live upon? His property. Where was his
property ? He didn't precisely remember where it was. What was
it ? No business of anybody's. Had he inherited it ? Yes, he had.
From whom ? Distant relation. Very distant ? Rather. Ever
been in prison ? Certainly not. Never in a debtors' prison ? Didn't
see what that had to do with it. Never in a debtors' prisqp ? — Come,
once again. Never ? Yes. How many times ? Two or^three times.
Not five or six ? Perhaps. Of what profession ? Gentleman. Ever
been kicked? Might have been. Frequently? No. Ever kicked
down-stairs ? Decidedly not ; once received a kick on the top of a
staircase, and fell down-stairs of his own accord. Kicked on that
occasion for cheating at dice ? Something to that effect was said by

Mr. Attorney- Genet at s Witnesses. 389

the intoxicated liar who committed the assault, but it was not true.
Swear it was not true ? Positively. Ever live by cheating at play ?
Never. Ever live by play? Not more than other gentlemen do.
Ever borrow money of the prisoner ? Yes. Ever pay him ? No.
Was not this intimacy with the prisoner, in reality a very slight one,
forced upon the prisoner in coaches, inns, and packets ? No. Sure he
saw the prisoner with these lists? Certain. Knew no more about
the lists ? No. Had not procured them himself, for instance ? No.
Expect to get anything by this evidence ? No. Not in regular govern-
ment pay and employment, to lay traps ? Oh dear no. Or to do any-
thing? Oh dear no. Swear that? Over and over again. No motives
but motives of sheer patriotism ? None whatever.

The virtuous servant, Eoger Cly, swore his way through the case
at a great rate. He had taken service with the prisoner, in good faith
and simplicity, four years ago. He had asked the prisoner, aboard
the Calais packet, if he wanted a handy fellow, and the prisoner had
engaged him. He had not asked the prisoner to take the handy fellow
as an act of charity — never thought of such a thing. He began to
have suspicions of the prisoner, and to keep an eye upon him, soon
afterwards. In arranging his clothes, while travelling, he had seen
similar lists to these in the prisoner's pockets, over and over again.
He had taken these lists from the drawer of the prisoner's desk. He
had not put them there first. He had seen the prisoner show these
identical lists to French gentlemen at Calais, and similar lists to
French gentlemen, both at Calais and Boulogne. He loved his
country, and couldn't bear it, and had given information. He had
never been suspected of stealing a silver tea-pot ; he had been
maligned respecting a mustard-pot, but it turned out to be only a
plated one. He had known the last witness seven or eight years ;
that was merely a coincidence. He didn't call it a particularly curious
coincidence ; most coincidences were curious. Neither did he call it
a curious coincidence that true patriotism was his only motive too.
He was a true Briton, and hoped there were many like him.
■ The blue-flies buzzed again, and Mr. Attorney-General called Mr.
Jarvis Lorry.

" Mr. Jarvis Lorry, are you a clerk in Tellson's Bank ? "

"lam."

"On a certain Friday night in November one thousand seven
hundred and seventy-five, did business occasion you to travel between
London and Dover by the mail ? "

" It did."

" Were there any other passengers in the mail ? "

" Two."

" Did they alight on the road in the course of the night ? "

« They did."

"Mr. Lorry, look upon the prisoner. Was he one of those two
passengers ? "

390 -^ Tale of Two Cities.

" I cannot undertake to say that he was."

" Does he resemble either of these two passengers ? "

" Both were so wrapped up, and the night was so dark, and we were
all so reserved, that I cannot undertake to say even that."

" Mr. Lorry, look again upon the prisoner. Supposing him wrapped
up as those two passengers were, is there anything in his bulk and
Btature to render it unlikely that he was one of them ? "

"No."

" You will not swear, Mr. Lorry, that he was not one of them ? "

« No."

" So at least you say he may have been one of them ? "

"Yes. Except that I remember them both to have been — like
myself — timorous of highwaymen, and the prisoner has not a timorous
air.

" Did you ever see a counterfeit of timidity, Mr. Lon-y ? "

" I certainly have seen that."

" Mr. Lorry, look once more upon the prisoner. Have you seen
him, to your certain knowledge, before ? "

" I have."

"When?"

" I was returning from France a few days afterwards, and, at Calais,
the prisoner came on board the packet-ship in which I returned, and
made the voyage with me."

" At what hour did he come on board ? "

" At a little after midnight."

" In the dead of the night. Was he the only passenger who came
on board at that untimely hour ? "

" Ho happened to be the only one."

" Never mind about ' happening,' Mr. Lorry. He was the only
passenger who came on board in the dead of the night ? "

" He was."

" Were you travelling alone, Mr. Lorry, or with any companion ? "

" With two companions. A gentleman and lady. They are here."

" They are here. Had you any conversation with the prisoner ? "

" Hardly any. The weather was stormy, and the passage long and
rough, and I lay on a sofa, almost from shore to shore."

" Miss Manette ! "

The young lady, to whom all eyes had been turned before, and were
now turned again, stood up where she had sat. Her father rose with
her, and kept her hand drawn through his arm.

" Miss Manette, look upon the prisoner."

To be confronted with such pity, and such earnest youth and beauty,
was far more trying to the accused than to be confronted with all the
crowd. Standing, as it were, apart with her on the edge of his grave,
not all the staring curiosity tliat looked on, could, for the moment,
nerve him to remain quite still. His hurried right hand parcelled
out the herbs before him into imaginary beds of flowers in a garden ;

Miss Manett^s Evidence, 391

and his efforts to control and steady his breathing shook the lips from
which the colour rushed to his heart. The buzz of the great flies was
loud again.

" Miss Manette, have you seen the prisoner before ? "

« Yes, sir."

« Where ? "

" On board of the packet-ship just now referred to, sir, and on the
same occasion."

" You ai'e the young lady just now referred to ? "

" O ! most unhappily, I am 1 "

The plaintive tone of her compassion merged into the less musical
voice of the Judge, as he said something fiercely : " Answer the
questions put to you, and make no remark upon them.'*

" Miss Manette, had you any conversation with the prisoner on that
passage across the Channel ? "

" Yes, sir."

" Kecall it."

In the midst of a profound stillness, she faintly began :

" When the gentleman came on board "

" Do you mean the prisoner? " inquired the Judge, knitting his brows.

" Yes, my Lord."

" Then say the prisoner."

" When the prisoner came on board, he noticed that my father,"
turning her eyes lovingly to him as he stood beside her, " was much
fatigued and in a very weak state of health. My father was so
reduced that I was afraid to take him out of the air, and I had made
a bed for him on the deck near the cabin steps, and I sat on the deck
at his side to take care of him. There were no other passengers that
night, but we four. The prisoner was so good as to bSg permission
to advise me how I could shelter my father from the wind and weather,
better than I had done. I had not known how to do it well, not
understanding how the wind would set when we were out of the
harbour. He did it for me. He expressed great gentleness and kind-
ness for my father's state, and I am sure he felt it. That was the
manner of our beginning to speak together."

"Let me interrupt you for a moment. Had he come on board
alone?"

" No."

" How n[iany were with him ? "

" Two French gentlemen."

" Had they conferred together ? "

*' They had conferred together until the last moment, when it was
necessary for the French gentlemen to be landed in their boat."

" Had any papers been handed about among them, similar to these
lists?"

"Some papers had been handed about among them, but I don't
know what papers."

392 A Tale of Two Cities.

" Like these in shape and size ? "

" Possibly, but indeed I don't know, although they stood whispering
very near to me : because they stood at the top of the cabin steps to
have the light of the lamp that was hanging there ; it was a dull
lamp, and they spoke very low, and I did not hear what they said,
and saw only that they looked at papers."

" Now, to the prisoner's conversation. Miss Manette."

" The prisoner was as open in his confidence with me — which rose
out of my helpless situation — as he was kind, and good, and useful to
my father. I hope," bursting into tears, *' I may not repay him by
doing him harm to-day."

Buzzing from the blue-flies.

" Miss Manette, if the prisoner does not perfectly understand that you
give the evidence which it is your duty to give — which you must give — ■
and which you cannot escape from giving — with great unwillingness,
he is the only person present in that condition. Please to go on."

" He told me that he was travelling on business of a delicate and
difficult nature, which might get people into trouble, and that he was
therefore travelling under an assumed name. He said that this
business had, within a few days, taken him to France, and might, at
intervals, take him backwards and forwards between France and
England for a long time to come."

" Did he say anything about America, Miss Manette ? Be par-
ticular."

" He tried to explain to me how that quarrel had arisen, and he
said that, so far as he could judge, it was a wrong and foolish one on
England's part. He added, in a jesting way, that perhaps George
Washington might gain almost as great a name in history as George
the Third. But there was no harm in his way of saying this : it was
said laughingly, and to beguile the time."

Any strongly marked expression of face on the part of a chief actor
in a scene of great interest to whom many eyes are directed, will be
unconsciously imitated by the spectators. Her forehead was painfully
anxious and intent as she gave this evidence, and, in the pauses when
she stopped for the Judge to write it down, watched its efiect upon the
counsel for and against. Among the lookers-on there was the same
expression in all quarters of the court ; insomuch, that a great majority
of the foreheads there, might have been mirrors reflecting the witness,
when the Judge looked up from his notes to glare at that tremendous
heresy about George Washington.

Mr. Attorney-General now signified to my Lord, that he deemed it
necessary, as a matter of precaution and form, to call the young lady's
father, Doctor Manette. Who was called accordingly.

" Doctor Manette, look upon the prisoner. Have you ever seen him
before?"

" Once. When he called at my lodgings in London. Some three
years, or three years and a half ago."

Mr. Attorney-GeneroTs Case. 393

"Can yon identify him as yonr fellow-passenger on board the
packet, or speak to his conversation with your daughter ? "

" Sii", I can do neither."

" Is there any particular and special reason for your being unable to
do either ? "

He answered, in a low voice, " There is."

"Has it been your misfortune to undergo a long imprisonment,
without trial, or even accusation, in your native country. Doctor
Manette ? "

He answered, in a tone that went to every heart, "A long im-
prisonment."

" Were you newly released on the occasion in question ? "

" They tell me so."

" Have you no remembrance of the occasion ? "

" None. My mind is a blank, from some time — I cannot even say
what time — when I employed myself, in my captivity, in making
shoes, to the time when I found myself living in London with my
dear daughter here. She had become familiar to me, when a gracious
God restored my faculties ; but, I am quite unable even to say how
she had become familiar. I have no remembrance of the process."

Mr. Attorney-General sat down, and the father and daughter sat
down together.

A singular circumstance then arose in the case. The object in hand
being to show that the prisoner went down, with some fellow-plotter
untracked, in the Dover mail on that Friday night in November five
years ago, and got out of the mail in the night, as a blind, at a place
where he did not remain, but from which he travelled back some
dozen miles or more, to a garrison and dockyard, and there collected
information ; a witness was called to identify him as having been at
the precise time required, in the coflfee-room of an hotel in that
garrison-and-dockyard town, waiting for another person. The
prisoner's counsel was cross-examining this witness with no result,
except that he had never seen the prisoner on any other occasion,
when the wigged gentleman who had all this time been looking at the
ceiling of the court, wrote a word or two on a little piece of paper,
screwed it up, and tossed it to him. Opening this piece of paper in
the next pause, the counsel looked with great attention and curiosity
at the prisoner.

" You say again you are quite sure that it wa» the prisoner ? "

The witness was quite sure.

" Did you ever see anybody very like the prisoner ? "

Not so like (the witness said) as that he could be mistaken.

" Look well upon that gentleman, my learned friend there," point-
ing to him who had tossed the paper over, " and then look well upon
the prisoner. How say you ? Are they very like each other ? "

Allowing for my learned friend's appearance being careless and
slovenly if not debauched, they were sufficiently like each other to

394 -^ ^^^^ '^f ^^^'^ Cities.

surprise, not only the witness, but everybody present, when they were
thus brought into comparison. My Lord being prayed to bid my
learned friend lay aside his wig, and giving no veiy gracious consent,
the likeness became much more remarkable. My Lord inquired of
Mr. Stryvor (the prisoner's counsel), whether they were next to try
Mr. Carton (name of my learned friend) for treason? But, Mr.
Stryver replied to my Lord, no ; but he would ask the witness to tell
him whether what happened once, might happen twice ; whether
he would have been so confident if he had seen this illustration
of his rashness sooner, whether he would be so confident, having
seen it ; and more. The upshot of which, was, to smash this witness
like a crockery vessel, and shiver his part of the case to useless
lumber.

Mr. Cruncher had by this time taken quite a lunch of rust oflF his
fingers in his following of the evidence. He had now to attend while
Mr. Stryver fitted the prisoner's case on the jury, like a compact suit
of clothes ; showing them how the patriot, Barsad, was a hired spy
and traitor, an unblushing trafficker in blood, and one of the greatest
scoundrels upon earth since accursed Judas — which he certainly did
look rather like. How the virtuous servant, Cly, was his friend and
partner, and was worthy to be ; how the watchful eyes of those forgers
and false swearers had rested on the prisoner as a victim, because
some family affairs in France, he being of French extraction, did
require his making those passages across the Channel — though what
those affairs were, a consideration for others who were near and dear
to him, forbad him, even for his life, to disclose. How the evidence
that had been warped and wrested from the young lady, whose
anguish in giving it they had witnessed, came to nothing, involving
the mere little innocent gallantries and politenesses likely to pass
between any young gentleman and young lady so thrown together ; — •
with the exception of that reference to George Washington, which
was altogether too extravagant and impossible to be regarded in any
other light than as a monstrous joke. How it would be a weakness
in the government to break down in this attempt to practise for
popularity on the lowest national antipathies and fears, and therefore
Mr. Attorney-General had made the most of it ; how, nevertheless, it
rested upon nothing, save that vile and infamous character of evidence
too often disfiguring such cases, and of which the State Trials of this
country were full. But, there my Lord interposed (with as grave a
face as if it had not been true), saying that he could not sit upon that
Bench and suffer those allusions.

Mr. Stryver then called his few witnesses, and Mr. Cruncher had
next to attend while Mr. Attorney-General turned the whole suit of
clothes Mr. Stryver had fitted on the jury, inside out ; showing how
Bai'sad and Cly were even a hundred times better than he had thought
them, and the prisoner a hundred times worse. Lastly, came my
Lord himself, turning the suit of clothes, now inside out, now outside

Mr. Carton and the Defence. 395

in, but on the whole decidedly trimming and shaping them into
giaveclothes for the prisoner.

And now, the jury turned to consider, and the great flies swarmed
again.

Mr. Carton, who had so long sat looking at the ceiling of the court,
changed neither his place nor his attitude, even in this excitement.
While his learned friend, Mr. Stryver, massing his papers before him,
whispered with those who sat near, and from time to time glanced
anxiously at the jury ; while all tlie spectators moved more or less,
and grouped themselves anew; whUo even my Lord himself arose
from his seat, and slowly paced up and down his platform, not un-
attended by a suspicion in the minds of the audience that his state
was feverish ; this one man sat leaning back, with his torn gown half
off him, his untidy wig put on just as it had happened to light on his
head after its removal, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes on the
ceiling as they had been all day. Something especially reckless in
liis demeanour, not only gave him a disreputable look, but so diminished
the strong resemblance he undoubtedly bore to the prisoner (which his
momentary earnestness, when they were compared together, had
strengthened), that many of the lookers-on, talring note of him now,
said to one another they would hardly have thought the two were so
alike. Mr. Cruncher made the observation to his next neighlx)ur, and
added, " I'd hold half a guinea that lie don't get no law-work to do.
Don't look like the sort of one to get any, do he ? "

Yet, this Mr. Carton took in more of the details of the scene than
he appeared to take in ; for now, when Miss Manette's head dropped
upon her father's breast, he was the first to see it, and to say audibly :
" OflBcer ! look to that young lady. Help the gentleman to take her
out. Don't you see she will fall ! "

There was much commiseration for her as she was removed, and
much sympathy with her father. It had evidently been a great dis-
tress to him, to have the days of his imprisonment recalled. He had
shown strong internal agitation when he was questioned, and that
pondering or brooding look which made him old, had been upon him,
like a heavy cloud, ever since. As he passed out, the jury, who had
turned back and paused a moment, spoke, through their foreman.

They were not agreed, and wished to retire. My Lord (perhaps
with George Washington on his mind) showed some surprise that
they were not agreed, but signified his pleasure that they should
retire under watch and ward, and retired himself. The trial had
lasted all day, and the lamps in the court were now being lighted.
It began to be i-umoured tlaat the jury would be out a long while.
The spectators dropped off to get refreshment, and the prisoner with-
drew to the back of the dock, and sat down.

Mr. Lorry, who had gone out when the young lady and her father
went out, now reappeared, and beckoned to Jerry : who, in the
slackened interest, could easily get near him.

396 A Tale of Two Cities.

" Jerry, if you wish to take something to eat, you can. But, keep
in the way. You will be sure to hear when the jury come in. Don't
be a moment behind them, for I want you to take the verdict back to
the bank. You are the quickest messenger I know, and will get to
Temple Bar long before I can."

Jerry had just enough forehead to knuckle, and he knuckled it in
acknowledgment of this communication and a shilling. Mr. Carton
came up at the moment, and touched Mr. Lorry on the arm.

" How is the young lady ? "

" She is greatly distressed ; but her father is comfortiag her, and
she feels the better for being out of court."

" I'll tell the prisoner so. It won't do for a respectable bank gentle-
man like you, to be seen speaking to him publicly, you know."

Mr. Lorry reddened as if he were conscious of having debated the
point in his mind, and Mr. Carton made his way to the outside of the
bar. The way out of court lay in that direction, and Jerry followed
him, all eyes, ears, and spikes.

" Mr. Darnay ! "

The prisoner came forward directly.

"You will naturally be anxious to hear of the witness. Miss
Manette. She will do very well. You have seen the worst of her
agitation."

" I am deeply sorry to have been the cause of it. Could you tell
her so for me, with my fervent acknowledgments ? "

" Yes, I could. I will, if you ask it."

Mr. Carton's manner was so careless as to be almost insolent. He
stood, half turned from the prisoner, lounging with his elbow against
the bar.

" I do ask it. Accept my cordial thanks."

" What," said Carton, still only half turned towards him, " do you
expect, Mr. Darnay '? "

« The worst."

"It's the wisest thing to expect, and the likeliest. But I think
their withdrawing is in your favour."

Loitering on the way out of court not being allowed, Jerry heard
no more : but left them — so like each other in feature, so unlike each
other in manner — standing side by side, both reflected in the glass
above them.

An hour and a half limped heavily away in the thief-and-rascal
crowded passages below, even though assisted off with mutton pies and
ale. The hoarse messenger, uncomfortably seated on a form after
taking that refection, had dropped into a doze, when a loud murmur
and a rapid tide of people setting up the stairs that led to the court,
carried him along with them.

" Jerry ! Jerry ! " Mr. Lorry was already calling at the door when
he got there.

" Here, sir ! It's a fight to get back again. Here I am, sir I "

v>

Acquitted. 397

Mr. Lorry handed him a paper through the throng. " Quick 1
Have you got it ? "

"Yes, sir?"

Hastily written on the paper was the word " Acquitted."

"If you had sent the message, ' Kecalled to Life,' again," muttered
Jerry, as he turned, " I should have known what you meant, this time."

He had no opportunity of saying, or so much as thinking, anything
else, until he was clear of the Old Bailey ; for, the crowd came pour-
ing out with a vehemence that nearly took him oflf his legs, and a loud
buzz swept into the street as if the baffled blue-flies were dispersing
in search of other carrion.

CHAPTER IV.

CONGRATULATORY.

From the dimly-lighted passages of the court, the last sediment of the
human stew tliat had been boiling there all day, was straining off,
when Doctor Manette, Lucie Manette, his daughter, Mr. Lorry, the
solicitor for the defence, and its counsel, Mr. Stryver, stood gathered
round Mr. Charles Darnay — ^just released — congratulating him on his
escape from death.

It would have been difficult by a far brighter light, to recognise in
Doctor Manette, intellectual of face and upright of bearing, the shoe-
maker of the garret in Paris. Yet, no one could have looked at him
twice, without looking again : even though the opportunity of observa-
tion had not extended to the mournful cadence of his low grave voice,
and to the abstraction that overclouded him fitfully, without any
apparent reason. While one external cause, and that a reference to
his long lingering agony, would always — as on the trial — evoke this
condition from the depths of his soul, it was also in its nature to arise
of itself, abd to draw a gloom over him, as incomprehensible to those
unacquainted with his story as if they had seen the shadow of tho
actual Bastille thrown upon him by a summer sun, when the sub-
stance was three hundred miles away.

Only his daughter had the power of charming this black brooding
from his mind. She was the golden thread that imited him to a Past
beyond his misery, and to a Present beyond his misery : and the
sound of her voice, the light of her face, the touch of her hand, had
a strong beneficial influence with him almost always. Not absolutely
always, for she could recall some occasions on which her power had
failed ; but they were few and slight, and she believed them over.

Mr. Darnay had kissed her hand fervently and gratefully, and had
turned to Mr. Stryver, whom he warmly thanked. Mr. Stryver, a

398 A Tale of Two Cities.

man of little more than thirty, but looking twenty years older than
ho was, stout, loud, red, bluff, and free from any drawback of delicacy,
had a pushing way of shouldering himself (morally and physically)
into companies and conversations, that argued well for his shouldering
his way up in life.

He still had his wig and gown on, and he said, squaring himself at
his late client to that degree that he squeezed the innocent Mr. Lorry
clean out of the group: "I am glad to have brought you off with
honour, Mr. Darnay. It was an infamous prosecution, grossly in-
famous ; but not the less likely to succeed on that account."

" You have laid me under an obligation to you for life — in two
senses," said his late client, taking his hand.

" I have done my best for you, Mr. Darnay ; and my best is as good
as another man's, I believe."

It clearly being incumbent on some one to say, " Much better," Mr.
Lorry said it; perhaps not quite disinterestedly, but with the in-
terested object of squeezing himself back again.

" You think so ? " said Mr. Stry ver. " Well ! you have been present
all day, and you ought to know. You are a man of business, too."

" And as such," quoth Mr. Lorry, whom the counsel learned in the
law had now shouldered back into the group, just as he had previously
shouldered him out of it — " as such I will appeal to Doctor Manette,
to break up this conference and order us all to our homes. Miss
Lucie looks ill, Mr. Darnay has had a terrible day, we are worn out."

" Speak for yourself, Mr. Lorry," said Stryver ; " I have a night's
work to do yet. Speak for yourself"

" I speak for myself," answered Mr. Lorry, " and for Mr. Darnay,

and for Miss Lucie, and Miss Lucie, do you not think I may

speak for us all ? " He asked her the question pointedly, and with a
glance at her father.

His face had become frozen, as it were, in a very curious look at
Darnay : an intent look, deepening into a frown of dislike and distrust,
not even unmixed with fear. With this strange expression on him
his thoughts had wandered away.

" My father," said Lucie, softly laying her hand on his.

He slowly shook the shadow oft', and turned to her.

" Shall we go home, my father ? "

With a long breath, he answered " Yes."

The friends of the acquitted prisoner had dispersed, under the
impression — which he himself had originated — that he would not be
released that night. The lights were nearly all extinguished in the
passages, the iron gates were being closed with a jar and a rattle, and
the dismal place was deserted imtil to-morrow morning's interest of
gallows, pillory, whipping-post, and branding-iron, should re-people
it. Walking between her father and Mr. Darnay, Lucie Manette
passed into the open air. A hackney-coach was called, and the father
and daughter departed in it.

Mr. Lorry and Mr. Carton. 399

Mr. Stryver had left them in the passages, to shoulder his way back
to the robing-room. Another person, who had not joined the group,
or interchanged a word with any one of them, but who had been
leaning against the wall where its shadow was darkest, had silently
strolled out after the rest, and had looked on until the coach drove
away. He now stepped up to where Mr. Lorry and Mr. Damay stood
upon the pavement.

" So, Mr. Lorry ! Men of business may si)eak to Mr. Damay now ? "

Nobody had made any acknowledgment of Mr. Carton's part in the
day's proceedings ; nobody had known of it. He was unrobed, and
was none the better for it in appearance.

" If you knew what a conflict goes on in the business mind, when
the business mind is divided between good-natured impulse and busi-
ness appearances, you would be amused, Mr. Damay."

Mr. Lorry reddened, and said, warmly, " You have mentioned that
before, sir. We men of business, who serve a House, are not our own
masters. We have to think of the House more than ourselves."

" I know, J know," rejoined Mr. Carton, carelessly. " Don't be
nettled, Mr. Lorry. You are as good as another, I have no doubt :
better, I dare say."

" And indeed, sir," pursued Mr. Lorry, not minding him, " I really
don't know what you have to do with the matter. If you'll excuse
me, as very much your elder, for saying so, I really don't know that
it is your business."

" Business ! Bless you, I have no business," said Mr. Carton.

" It is a pity you have not, sir." ,

" I think so, too."

" If you had," pursued Mr. Lorry, " perhaps you would attend to it."

" Lord love you, no ! — I shouldn't," said Mr. Carton.

" Well, sir ! " cried Mr. Lorry, thoroughly heated by his indiffer-
ence, " business is a very good thing, and a very respectable thing.
And, sir, if business imposes its restraints and its silences and impedi-
ments, Mr. Damay as a young gentleman of generosity knows how to
make allowance for that circumstance. Mr. Damay, good-night, God
bless you, sir ! I hope you have been this day preserved for a
prosperous and happy life. — Chair there ! "

Perhaps a little angry with himself, as well as with the barrister,
Mr. Lorry bustled into the chaii', and was carried off to Tellson's.
Carton, who smelt of port wine, and did not appear to be quite sober,
laughed then, and turned to Darnay :

" This is a strange chance that throws you and me together. This
must be a strange night to you, standing alone here with your counter-
part on these street stones ? "

" I hardly seem yet," returned Charles Damay, " to belong to this
world agaiu."

" I don't wonder at it ; it's not so long since you were pretty far
advanced on your way to another. You speak faintly."

400 A Tale of Two Cities.

" I begin to think I am faint."

" Then why the devil don't you dine ? 1 dined, myself, while thosb
numskulls were deliberating which world you should belong to — this,
or some other. Let me show you the nearest tavern to dine well at."

Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down Ludgate Hill
to Fleet Street, and so, up a covered way, into a tavern. Here, they
were shown into a little room, where Charles Darnay was soon re-
cruiting his strength with a good plain dinner and good wine : while
Carton sat opposite to him at the same table, with his separate bottle
of port before him, and his fully half-insolent manner upon him.

" Do you feel, yet, that you belong to this terrestrial scheme again,
Mr. Darnay?"

" I am frightfully confused regarding time and place ; but I am so
far mended as to feel that."

" It must be an immense satisfaction ! "

He said it bitterly, and filled up his glass again : which was a large
one.

" As to me, the greatest desire I have, is to forget that I belong to
it. It has no good in it for me — except wine like this — nor I for it.
So we are not much alike in that particular. Indeed, I begin to think
we are not much alike in any particular, you and I."

Confused by the emotion of the day, and feeling his being there
with this Double of coarse deportment, to be like a dream, Charles
Darnay was at a loss how to answer ; finally, answered not at all.

" Now your dinner is done," Carton presently said, " why don't you
call a health, Mr. Parnay ; why don't you give your toast ? "

" What health ? What toast ? "

" Why, it's on the tip of your tongue. It ought to be, it must be
I'll swear it's there."

" Miss Manette, then ! "

•' Miss Manette, then ! "

Looking his companion full in the face while he drank the toast,
Carton flung his glass over his shoulder against the wall, where it
shivered to pieces ; then, rang the bell, and ordered in another.

" That's a fair young lady to hand to a coach in the dark, Mr.
Darnay ! " he said, filling his new goblet.

A slight frown and a laconic " Yes " were the answer.

" That's a fair young lady to be pitied by and wept for by ! How
does it feel ? Is it worth being tried for one's life to be the object
of such sympathy and compassion, Mr. Darnay ? "

Again Darnay answered not a word.

" She was mightily pleased to have your message, when I gave it
her. Not that she showed she was pleased, but I suppose she was."

The allusion served as a timely reminder to Darnay that this dis-
agreeable companion had, of his own free will, assisted him in the
strait of the day. He turned the dialogue to that point, and thanked
him for it.

Charles Damay and his Double. 40t

"1 neither want any thanks, nor merit any," was the carelesd
rejoinder. " It was nothing to do, in the first place ; and I don't
know why I did it, in the second. Mr* Damay, let me ask you a
question."

" Willingly, and a small return for your good offices."

" Do you think I particularly like you ? "

" Really, Mr. Carton," returned the other, oddly disconcerted, " 1
have not asked myself the question."

" But ask yourself the question now."

" You have acted as if you do ; hut I don't think you do."

" I don't think I do," said Carton. " I begin to have a very good
opinion of your understanding."

" Nevertheless," pursued Damay, rising to ling the bell, " there is
nothing in that, I hope, to prevent my calling the reckoning, and our
parting without ill-blood on either side."

Carton rejoining, " Nothing in life ! " Damay rang. " Do you call
the whole reckoning ? " said Carton. On his answering in the affirma-
tive, " Then bring me another pint of this same wine, drawer, and
come and wake me at ten."

The bill being paid, Charles Darnay rose and wished him good-
night. Without returning the wish. Carton rose too, with something
of a threat of defiance in his manner, and said, " A last word, Mr.
Damay : you think I am drunk ? "

" I think you have been drinking, Mr. Carton."

" Think ? You know I have been drinking."

" Since I must say so, I know it."

" Then you shall likewise know why. I am a disappointed drudge,
sir. I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me."

•' Much to be regretted. You might have used your talents better."

" May be so, Mr. Damay ; may be not. Don't let your sober face
elate you, however; you don't know what it may come to. Good-
night ! "

When he was left alone, this strange being took up a candle, went to
a glass that hung against the wall, and surveyed himself minutely in it.

" Do you particularly like the man ? " he muttered, at his own
image ; " why should you particularly like a man who resembles
you ? There is nothing in you to like ; you know that. Ah, confound
you ! What a change you have made in yourself ! A good reason
for taking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away
from, and what you might have been ! Change places with him, and
would you have been looked at by those blue eyes as he was, and com-
miserated by that agitated face as he was ? Come on, and have it out
in plain words ! You hate the fellow."

He resorted to his pint of wine for consolation, drank it all in a
few muiutes, and fell asleep on his arms, with his hair straggling
over the table, and a long winding-sheet in the candle dripping down
upon him.

2 o

CHAPTER V.

THE JACKAL.

Those were drinking days, and most men drank hard. So very great
is the improvement Time has brought about in such habits, that a
moderate statement of the quantity of wine and punch which one man
would swallow in the course of a night, without any detriment to his
reputation as a perfect gentleman, would seem, in these days, a
ridiculous exaggeration. The learned profession of the law was
certainly not behind any other learned profession in its Bacchanalian
propensities ; neither was Mr. Stry ver, already fast shouldering his
way to a large and lucrative practice, behind his compeers in this
particular, any more than in the drier parts of the legal race.

A favourite at the Old Bailey, and eke at the Sessions, Mr. Stryver
had begun cautiously to hew away the lower staves of the ladder on
which lie mounted. Sessions and Old Bailey had now to summon
their favourite, specially, to their longing arms ; and shouldering
itself towards the visage of the Lord Chief Justice in the Court of
King's Bench, the florid countenance of Mr. Stryver might be daily
seen, bursting out of the bed of wigs, like a great sunflower pushing its
way at the sun from among a rank gardenfuU of flaring companions.

It had once been noted at the Bar, that while Mr. Stryver was a glib
man, and an unscrupulous, and a ready, and a bold, he had not that
faculty of extracting the essence from a heap of statements, which is
among the most striking and necessary of the advocate's accomplish-
ments. But, a remarkable improvement came upon him as to this.
The more business he got, the greater his power seemed to grow of
getting at its pith and marrow ; and however late at night he sat
carousing with Sydney Carton, he always had his points at his fingers'
ends in the morning.

Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men, was Stryver's
great ally. What the two drank together, between Hilary Term and
Michaelmas, might have floated a king's ship. Stryver never had a
case in hand, anywhere, but Carton was there, with his hands in his
pockets, staring at the ceiling of the court ; they went the same
Circuit, and even there they prolonged their usual orgies late into the
night, and Carton was rumoured to be seen at broad day, going home
stealthily and unsteadily to his lodgings, like a dissipated cat. At
last, it began to get about, among such as were interested in the matter,
that although Sydney Carton would never be a lion, he was an amazingly
good jackal, and that he rendered suit and service to Stryver in that
humble capacity.

" Ten o'clock, sii'," said the man at the tavern, whom he had
charged to wake him — " ten o'clock, sir."

Mr. Stryver atid Sydney Carton, 403

«TF/ia/'«tho matter?"

« Ten o'clock, sir."

" What do you mean ? Ten o'clock at night ? "

" Yes, sir. Your honour told me to call you."

" Oh ! I remember. Very well, very well."

After a few dull eflforts to get to sleep again, which the man
dexterously combated by stirring the fire continuously for five minutes,
he got up, tossed his hat on, and walked out. He turned into the
Temple, and, having revived himself by twice pacing the pavements
of King's Bench Walk and Paper Buildings, turned into the Stryver
chambers.

The Stryver clerk, who never assisted at these conferences, had
gone home, and the Stryver principal opened the door. He had his
slippers on, and a loose bedgown, and his .throat was bare for his
greater ease. He had that rather wild, strained, seared marking about
the eyes, which may be observed in all free livers of his class, from
the portrait of Jeffries downward, and which can be traced, under
various disguises of Art, through the portraits of every Drinking Age.

" You ai'e a little late. Memory," said Stryver.

" About the usual time ; it may be a quarter of an hour later."

They went into a dingy room lined with books and littered with
papers, where there was a blazing fire. A kettle steamed upon tho
hob, and in the midst of the wreck of papers a table shone, with plenty
of wine upon it, and brandy, and rum, and sugar, and lemons.

" You have had your bottle, I perceive, Sydney."

" Two to-night, I think. I have been dining with the day's client ;
or seeing him dine — it's all one ! "

" That was a rare point, Sydney, that you brought to bear upon the
identification. How did you come by it ? When did it strike you ? "

" I thought he was rather a handsome fellow, and I thought I
should have been much the same sort of fellow, if I had had any
luck."

Mr. Stryver laughed till he shook his precocious paunch.

" You and your luck, Sydney I Get to work, get to work."

Sullenly enough, the jackal loosened his dress, went into an adjoin-
ing room, and came back with a large jug of cold water, a basin, and
a towel or two. Steeping the towels in the water, and partially
wringing them out, he folded them on his head in a manner hideous
to behold, sat down at the table, and said, " Now I am ready ! "

" Not much boiling down to be done to-night. Memory," said Mr.
Stryver, gaily, as he looked among his papers.

" How much ? "

" Only two sets of them."

" Give me the worst first."

" There they are, Sydney. Fire away ! "

The lion then composed himself on his back on a sofa on one
side of the drinking-table, while tho jackal sat at his own paper-

404 -^ ^^^<^ ^f '^'^^ Cities.

bestrewn table proper, on the other side of it, with the bottles ana
glasses ready to his hand. Both resorted to the drinking-table with-
out stint, but each in a different way ; the lion for the most part
reclining with his hands in his waistband, looking at the fire, or
occasionally flirting with some lighter document ; the jackal, with
knitted brows and intent face, so deep in his task, that his eyes did
not even follow the hand he stretched out for his glass — which often
groped about, for a minute or more, before it found the glass for his
lips. Two or three times, the matter in hand became so knotty, that
the jackal found it imperative on him to get up, and steep his towels
anew. From these pilgrimages to the jug and basin, he returned
with such eccentricities of damp head-gear as no words can describe ;
which were made the more ludicrous by his anxious gravity.

At length the jackal had got together a compact repast for the lion,
and proceeded to offer it to him. The lion took it with care and
caution, made his selections from it, and his remarks upon it, and the
jackal assisted both. When the repast was fully discussed, the lion
put his hands in his waistband again, and lay down to meditate. The
jackal then invigorated himself with a bumper for his throttle, and a
fresh application to his head, and applied himself to the collection of
a second meal ; this was administered to the lion in the same manner,
and was not disposed of until the clocks struck three in the morning.

" And now we have done, Sydney, fill a bumper of punch," said Mr.
Stryver.

The jackal removed the towels from his head, which had been
steaming again, shook himself, yawned, shivered, and complied.

"You were very sound, Sydney, in the matter of those crown
witnesses to-day. Every question told."

" I always am sound ; am I not ? "

" I don't gainsay it. What has roughened your temper ? Put some
punch to it and smooth it again."

With a deprecatory grunt, the jackal again complied.

" The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School," said Stryver,
nodding his head over him as he reviewed him in the present and the
past, " the old seesaw Sydney. Up one minute and down the next ;
now in spirits and now in despondency ! "

" Ah ! " returned the other, sighing : " yes ! The same Sydney,
with the same luck. Even then, I did exercises for other boys, and
seldom did my own."

" And why not ? "

" God knows. It was my way, I suppose."

He sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out
before him, looking at the fire.

" Carton," said his friend, squaring himself at him with a bullying
air, as if the fire-grate had been the furnace in which sustained
endeavour was forged, and the one delicate thing to be done for the
old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School was to shoulder him into

Over a Bumper of Punch. 405

it, "your way is, and always was, a lame way. You Btimmon no
energy and purpose. Look at me."

" Oh, botheration ! " returned Sydney, with a lighter and more
good-humoured laugh, " don't you, be moral ! "

" How have I done what I have done ? " said Stryver ; " how do I
do what I do ? "

" Partly through paying me to help yon, I suppose. But it's not
worth your while to apostrophise me, or the air, aboiit it ; what you
want to do, you do. You were always in the front rank, and I was
always behind."

" I had to get into the front rank ; I was not born there, was I ? "

" I was not present at the ceremony ; but my opinion is you were,"
said Carton. At this, he laughed again, and they both laughed.

" Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever since Shrews-
bury," pursued Carton, " you have fallen into your rank, and I have
fallen into mine. Even when we were fellow-students in the Student-
Quarter of Paris, picking up French, and French law, and other
French crumbs that we didn't get much good of, you were always
somewhere, and I was always — nowhere."

" And whose fault was that ? "

" Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours. You were
always driving and riving and shouldering and pressing, to that
restless degree that I had no chance for my life but in rust and re-
pose. It's a gloomy thing, however, to talk about one's own past, with
the day breaking. Turn mo in some other direction before I go."

" Well then ! Pledge me to the pretty witness," said Stryver,
holding up his glass. " Are you turned in a pleasant direction ? "

Apparently not, for he became gloomy again.

" Pretty witness," he muttered, looking down into his glass. " I
have had enough of witnesses to-day and to-night ; who's your pretty
witness ? " *

" The picturesque doctor's daughter. Miss Manette."

"/S^Ae pretty?"

« Is she not ? "

"No."

" Why, man alive, she was the admiration of the whole Court ! "

"Rot the admiration of the whole Court! Who made the Old
Bailey a judge of beauty ? She was a golden-haired doll I "

" Do you know, Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, looking at him with
sharp eyes, and slowly drawing a hand across his florid face : " do
you know, I rather thought, at the time, that you sympathised with
the golden-haired doll, and were quick to see what happened to the
golden-haired doll ? "

" Quick to see what happened ! If a gii'l, doll or no doll, swoons
within a yard or two of a man's nose, he can see it without a per-
spective-glass. I pledge you, but I deny the beauty. And now I'll
have no more drink ; I'll get to bed."

406 A Tale of Two Cities. .

When his Lost followed him out on the staircase with a candle, to
light him down'^the stairs, the day was coldly looking in through its
grimy windows. When he got out of the house, the air was cold and
sad, the dull sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole scene
like a lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust wore spinning roxind and
round before the morning blast, as if the desert-sand had risen far
away, and the first spray of it in its advance had begun to overwhelm
the city.

Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood
still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying
in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-
denial, and perseverance. In the fail* city of this vision, there were
airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him,
gardens in which the fi-uits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope
that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing
to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his
clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears.

Sadly, sadly, the sun rose ; it rose upon no sadder sight than the
man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed
exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible
of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.

CHAPTER VI.

HUNDREDS OP PEOPLE.

The quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a quiet street-corner
not far from Soho Square. On the afternoon of a certain fine Sunday
when the waves of four months had rolled over the trial for treason,
and carried it, as to the public interest and memory, far out to sea,
Mr. Jarvis Lorry walked along the sunny streets from Clerkenwell
where he lived, on his way to dine with the Doctor. After several
relapses into business-absorption, Mr. Lorry had become the Doctor's
friend, and the quiet street-corner was the sunny part of his life.

On this certain fine Sunday, Mr. Lorry walked towards Soho, early
in the afternoon, for three reasons of habit. Firstly, because, on fine
Sundays, he often walked out, before dinner, with the Doctor and
Lucie ; secondly, because, on unfavourable Sundays, he was accus-
tomed to be with them as the family friend, talking, reading, looking
out of window, and generally getting through the day; thirdly,
because he happened to have his own little shrewd doubts to solve,
and knew how the ways of the Doctor's household pointed to that
time as a likely time for solving them.

A quainter corner than the corner where the Doctor lived, was not

Doctor Manette's Lodgings. 407

to be found in London. There was no way through it, and the front
windows of the Doctor's lodgings commanded a pleasant little vista
of street that had a congenial air of retirement on it. There were few
buildings then, north of the Oxford Road, and forest-trees flourished,
and wild flowers grew, and the hawthorn blossomed, in the now
vanished fields. As a consequence, country airs circulated in Soho
with vigorous freedom, instead of languishing into the parish like
stray paupers without a settlement ; and there was many a good south
wall, not far ofi^, on which the peaches ripened in their season.

The summer light struck into the comer brilliantly in the earlier
part of the day ; but, when the streets grew hot, the corner was in
shadow, though not in shadow so remote but that you could seo
beyond it into a glare of brightness. It was a cool spot, staid but
cheerful, a wonderful place for echoes, and a very harbour from tho
raging streets.

There ought to have been a tranquil bark in such an anchorage,
and there was. The Doctor occupied two floors of a large still house,
where several callings purported to be pursued by day, but whereof
little was audible any day, and which was shunned by all of them at
night. In a building at the back, attainable by a court-yard where
a plane-tree rustled its green leaves, church-organs claimed to bo
made, and silver to be chased, and likewise gold to be beaten by some
mysterious giant who had a golden arm starting out of tho wall of
the front hall — as if he had beaten himself precious, and menaced a
similar conversion of all visitors. Very little of these trades, or of
a lonely lodger rumoured to live up-stairs, or of a dim coach-trimming
maker asserted to have a counting-house below, was ever heard or
seen. Occasionally, a stray workman putting lus coat on, traversed
the hall, or a stranger peered about there, or a distant clink was heard
across the court-yard, or a thump from the golden giant. These,
however, were only the exceptions required to prove the rule that
the sparrows in the plane-tree behind the house, and the echoes in
the comer before it, had their own way from Sunday morning unto
Saturday night.

Doctor Manette received such patients here as his old reputation,
and its revival in the floating whispers of his story, brought him.
His scientific knowledge, and his vigilance and skill in conducting
ingenious experiments, brought him otherwise into moderate request,
and be earned as much as he wanted.

These things were within Mr. Jarvis Lorry's knowledge, thoughts,
and notice, when he rang the door-bell of the tranquil house in tho
comer, on the fine Sunday afternoon.

" Doctor Manette at home ? "

Expected home.

" Miss Lucie at home ? "

Expected home.

" Miss Press at home ? "

408 A Tale of Two Cities.

Possibly at home, but of a certainty impossible for hand-maid to
anticipate intentions of Miss Pross, as to admission or denial of the
&ct.

" As I am at home myself," said Mr. Lorry, " I'll go up-stairs."

Although the Doctor's daughter had known nothing of the country
of her birth, she appeared to have innately derived from it that ability
to make much of little means, which is one of its most useful and
most agreeable characteristics. Simple as the furniture was, it was
set off by so many little adornments, of no value but for their taste
and fancy, that its effect was delightful. Tho disposition of every-
thing in the rooms, from the largest object to the least ; the arrange-
ment of colours, tho elegant variety and contrast obtained by thrift
in trifles, by delicate hands, clear eyes, and good sense ; were at onco
60 pleasant in themselves, and so expressive of their originator, that,
as Mr. Lorry stood looking about him, the very chairs and tables
seemed to ask him, with something of that peculiar expression which
he knew so well by this time, whether he approved ?

There were three rooms on a floor, and, tho doors by which they
communicated being put open that the air might pass freely through
them all, Mr. Lorry, smilingly observant of that fanciful resemblance
which he detected all around him, walked from one to another. The
fixst was the best room, and in it were Lucie's birds, and flowers, and
books, and desk, and work-table, and box of water-colours ; the second
was the Doctor's consulting-room, used also as the dining-room ; the
third, changingly speckled by the rustle of the plane-tree in the yard,
was the Doctor's bedroom, and there, in a corner, stood the disused
shoemaker's bench and tray of tools, much as it had stood on the fifth
floor of the dismal house by the wine-shop, in the suburb of Saint
Antoine in Paris.

" I wonder," said Mr. Lorry, pausing in his looking about, " that he
keeps that reminder of his sufferings about him ! "

" And why wonder at that ? " was the abrupt inquiry that made
him start.

It proceeded from Miss Pross, the wild red woman, strong of hand,
whose acquaintance he had first made at the Eoyal George Hotel at
Dover, and had since improved,

" I should have thought " Mr. Lorry began.

" Pooh ! You'd have thought ! " said Miss Pross ; and Mr. Lorry
left off.

*' How do you do ? " inquired that lady then — sharply, and yet as if
to express that she bore him no malice.

" I am pretty well, I thank you," answered Mr. Lorry, with meek-
ness ; " how are you ? "

" Nothing to boast of," said Miss Pross.

"Indeed?"

" Ah ! indeed ! " said Miss Pross, " I ftm very much put out abput
mj Ladybird,"

Miss Pross and Mr, Lorry. 409

"Indeed?"

" For gracious sake say something else besides ' indeed,' or you'll
fidget me to death," said Miss Pross; whose character (dissociated
from stature) was shortness.

" Eeally, then ? " said Mr. Lorry, as an amendment.

" Eeally, is bad enough," returned Miss Pross, " but better. Yes, I
am very much put out."

" May I ask the cause ? "

" I don't want dozens of people who are not at all worthy of Lady-
bird, to come here looking after her," said Miss Pross.

" Do dozens come for that purpose ? "

" Hundreds," said Miss Pross.

It was characteristic of this lady (as of some other people before
her time and since) that whenever her original proposition was ques-
tioned, she exaggerated it.

" Dear me ! " said Mr. Lorry, as the safest remark he could think of.

" I have lived with the darling — or the darling has lived with me,
and paid me for it ; which she certainly should never have done, you
may take your affidavit, if I could have afforded to keep either myself
or her for nothing — since she was ten years old. And it's really very
hard," said Miss Pross.

Not seeing with precision what was very hard, Mr. Lorry shook his
head ; using that important part of himself as a sort of fairy cloak that
would fit anything.

"All sorts of people who are not in the least degree worthy of
the pet, are always turning up," said Miss Pross. "When you
began it "

" J began it. Miss Pross ? "

" Didn't you ? Who brought her father to life ? "

" Oh ! If that was beginning it " said Mr. Lorry.

" It wasn't ending it, I suppose ? I say, when you began it, it was
hard enough ; not that I have any fault to find with Doctor Manette,
except that he is not worthy of such a daughter, which is no imputa-
tion on him, for it was not to be expected that anybody shoTild be,
tinder any circumstances. But it really is doubly and trebly hard to
have crowds and multitudes of people turning up after him (I could
have forgiven him), to take Ladybird's affections away from me." ,

Mr. Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous, but he also knew
her by this time to be, beneath the service of her eccentricity, one of
those unselfish creatures — found only among women — who will, for
pure love and admiration, bind themselves willing slaves, to youth
when they have lost it, to beauty that they never had, to accomplish-
ments that they were never fortunate enough to gain, to bright hopes
that never shone upon their own sombre lives. He knew enough of
the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful
service of the heart ; so rendered and so free from any mercenary
taint, he had such an exalted respect for it, thftt iu the retiibutivo

4IO A Tale of Two Cities.

arrangements made by his own mind — we all make such arrangements
more or less — ho stationed Miss Pross much nearer to the lower
Angels than many ladies immeasurably better got up both by Nature
and Art, who had balances at Tellson's.

" There never was, nor will be, but one man worthy of Ladybird,"
said Miss Pross ; " and that was my brother Solomon, if ho hadn't
made a mistake in life."

Here again : Mr. Lorry's inquiries into Miss Press's personal history
had established the fact that her brother Solomon was a heartless
scoundrel who had stripped her of everything she possessed, as a stake
to speculate y^'Ca.^ and had abandoned her in her poverty for ever-
more, with no touch of compunction. Miss Press's fidelity of belief
in Solomon (deducting a mere trifle for this slight mistake) was quite
a serious matter with Mr. Lorry, and had its weight in his good
opinion of her.

" As we happen to be alone for the moment, and are both people
of business," he said, when they had got back to the drawing-room
and had sat down there in friendly relations, " let mo ask you — does
the Doctor, in talking with Lucie, never refer to the shoemaking time,
yet?"

" Never."

" And yet keeps that bench and those tools beside him ? "

" Ah ! " returned Miss Pross, shaking her head. " But I don't say
he don't refer to it within himself."

" Do you believe that he thinks of it much ? "

" I do," said Miss Pross.

" Do you imagine " Mr. Lorry had begun, when Miss Pross

took him up short with :

" Never imagine anything. Have no imagination at all."

" I stand corrected ; do you suppose — you go so far as to suppose,
sometimes ? "

" Now and then," said Miss Pross.

" Do you suppose," Mr. Lorry went on, with a laughing twinkle in
his bright eye, as it looked kindly at her, " that Doctor Manette has
any theory of his own, preserved through all those years, relative to
the cause of his being so oppressed ; perhaps, even to the name of his
oppressor ? "

" I don't suppose anything about it but what Ladybird tells me."

" And that is "

« That she thinks he has."

" Now don't be angry at my asking all those questions ; because I
am a mere dull man of business, and you are a woman of business."

" Dull ? " Miss Pross inquired, with placidity.

Rather wishing his modest adjective away, Mr. Lorry replied,
" No, no, no. Surely not. To return to business : — Is it not remark-
able that Doctor Manette, unquestionably innocent of any crime as
we are all well assured he is, should never touch upon that question ?

A Wonderfiil Corner for Echoes. 41 1

I will not say with me, though he had bnsiness relations with me
many years ago, and we are now intimate ; I will say with the fair
daughter to whom he is so devotedly attached, and who is so devotedly
attached to him ? Believe me. Miss Pross, I don't approach the topic
with you, out of curiosity, but out of zealous interest."

"Well! To the best of my understanding, and bad's the best,
you'll tell me," said Miss Pross, softened by the tone of the apology,
*' he is afraid of the whole subject."

"Afraid?"

" It's plain enough, I should think, why ho may be. It's a dreadful
remembrance. Besides that, his loss of himself grow out of it. Not
knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may
never feel certain of not losing himself again. That alone wouldn't
make the subject pleasant, I should think."

It was a profounder remark than Mr. Lorry had looked for.
" True," said he, " and fearful to reflect upon. Yet, a doubt lurks in
my mind. Miss Pross, whether it is good for Doctor Manette to have
that suppression always shut up within him. Indeed, it is this doubt
and the uneasiness it sometimes causes me that has led me to our
present confidence."

" Can't bo helped," said Miss Pross, shaking her head. " Touch
that string, and he instantly changes for the worse. Better leave it
alone. In short, must leave it alone, like or no like. Sometimes, he
gets up in the dead of the night, and will be heard, by us overhead
there, walking up and down, walking up and down, in his room.
Ladybird has learnt to know then that his mind is walking up and
down, walking up and down, iu his old prison. She hurries to him,
and they go on together, walking up and down, walking up and down,
until he is composed. But he never says a word of the true reason
of his restlessness, to her, and she finds it best not to hint at it to
him. In silence they go walking up and down together, walking up
and down together, till her love and company have brought him to
himself."

Notwithstanding Miss Press's denial of her own imagination, tliero
was a perception of the pain of being monotonously haunted by one
sad idea, in her repetition of the phrase, walking up and down, which
testified to her possessing such a thing.

The comer has been mentioned as a wonderful corner for echoes ;
it had begun to echo so resoundingly to the tread of coming feet, that
it seemed as though the very mention of that weary pacing to and fro
had set it going.

" Here they are ! " said Miss Pross, rising to break up the con-
ference ; " and now we shall have hundreds of people pi'etty soon ! "

It was such a curious corner in its acoustical properties, such a
peculiar Ear of a place, that as Mr. Lorry stood at the open window,
looking for the father and daughter whose steps he heard, he fancied
they would never approach. Not only would the echoes die away, as

412 A Tale of Two Cities.

though the steps had gone ; but, echoes of other steps that never came
would be heard in their stead, and would die away for good when
they seemed close at hand. However, father and daughter did at last
appear, and Miss Press was ready at the street door to receive them.

Miss Press was a pleasant sight, albeit wild, and red, and grim,
taking off her darling's bonnet when she came up-stairs, and touching
it up with the ends of her handkerchief, and blowing the dust off it,
and folding her mantle ready for laying by, and smoothing her rich
hair with as much pride as she could possibly have taken in her own
hair if she had been the vainest and handsomest of women. Her
darling was a pleasant sight too, embracing her and thanking her,
and protesting against her taking so much trouble for her — which
last she only dared to do playfully, or Miss Press, sorely hurt, would
have retired to her own chamber and cried. The Doctor was a
pleasant sight too, looking on at them, and telling Miss Press how
she spoilt Lucie, in accents and with eyes that had as mucl. spoiling
in them as Miss Press had, and would have had more if it were
possible. Mr. Lorry was a pleasant sight too, beaming at all this in
his little wig, and thanking his bachelor stars for having lighted him
in his declining years to a Home. But, no Hundreds of people came
to see the sights, and Mr. Lorry looked in vain for the fulfilment of
Miss Press's prediction.

Dinner-time, and still no Hundreds of people. In the arrangements
of the little household, Miss Pross took charge of the lower regions,
and always acquitted herself marvellously. Her dinners, of a very
modest quality, were so well cooked and so well served, and so neat
in their contrivances, half English and half French, that nothing
could be better. Miss Press's friendship being of the thoroughly
practical kind, she had ravaged Soho and the adjacent provinces, in
search of impoverished French, who, tempted by shillings and half-
crowns, would impart culinary mysteries to her. From these decayed
sons and daughters of Gaul, she had acquired such wonderful arts,
that the woman and girl who formed the staff of domestics regarded
her as quite a Sorceress, or Cinderella's Godmother : who would send
out for a fowl, a rabbit, a vegetable or two from the garden, and
change them into anything she pleased.

On Sundays, Miss Pross dined at the Doctor's table, but on other
days persisted in taking her meals at unknown periods, either in the
lower regions, or in her own room on the second floor — a blue
chamber, to which no one but her Ladybii'd ever gained admittance.
On this occasion. Miss Pross, responding to Ladybird's pleasant face
and pleasant efforts to please her, unbent exceedingly ; so the dinner
was very pleasant, too.

It was an oppressive day, and, after dinner, Lucie proposed that
the wine should be carried out under the plane-tree, and they should
sit there in the air. As everything turned upon her, and revolved
about her, they went out, under the plane-tree, and she carried the

A Garden Party. 413

wine down for the special benefit of Mr. Lorry. She had installed
herself, some time before, as Mr. Lorry's cnp-bearer ; and while they
sat under the plane-tree, talking, she kept his glass replenished.
Mysterious backs and ends of houses peeped at them as they talked,
and the plane-tree whispered to them in its own way above their
heads.

Still, the Hundreds of people did not present themselves. Mr.
Damay presented himself while they were sitting under the plane-tree,
but he was only One.

Doctor Manette received him kindly, and so did Lucie. But, Miss
Press suddenly became afflicted with a twitching in the head and body,
and retired into the house. She was not unfrequently the victim of
this disorder, and she called it, in familiar conversation, " a fit of the
jerks."

The Doctor was in his best condition, and looked specially young.
The resemblance between him and Lucie was very strong at such
times, and as they sat side by side, she leaning on his shoulder, and
he resting his arm on the back of her chair, it was very agreeable to
ti-aco the likeness.

He had been talking all day, on many subjects, and with unusual
vivacity. " Pray, Doctor Manette," said Mr. Damay, as they sat under
the plane-tree — and he said it in the natural pursuit of the topic in
hand, which happened to be the old buildings of London — " have you
seen much of the Tower ? "

" Lucie and I have been there ; but only casually. We have seen
enough of it, to know that it teems with interest ; little more."

" I have been there, as you remember," said Damay, with a smile,
though reddening a little angrily, " in another character, and not in a
character that gives facilities for seeing much of it. They told me a
curious thing when I was there."

" What was that ? " Lucie asked.

"In making some alterations, the workmen came upon an old
dungeon, which had been, for many years, built up and forgotten.
Evei-y stone of its inner wall was covered by inscriptions which had
been carved by prisoners — dates, names, complaints, and prayere.
Upon a comer stone in an angle of the wall, one prisoner, who seemed
to have gone to execution, had cut as his last work, three letters. They
were done with some very poor instrument, and hurriedly, with an
unsteady hand. At first, they were read as D. I. C. ; but, on being
more carefully examined, the last letter was found to be G. There
was no record or legend of any prisoner with those initials, and many
fruitless guesses were made what the name could have been. At
length, it was suggested that the letters were not initials, but the
complete word, Dia. The floor was examined very carefully under
the inscription, and, in the earth beneath a stone, or tile, or some frag-
ment of paving, were found the ashes of a paper, mingled with the
ashes of a small leathern case or bag. What the unknown prisoner

414 -^ Tale of Two Cities.

had written will never bo read, but he had written something, and
hidden it away to keep it from the gaoler."

" My father," exclaimed Lucie, " you are ill ! "

He had suddenly started up, with his hand to his head. His manner
and his look quite terrified them all.

" No, my dear, not ill. There are large drops of rain falling, and
they made me start. We had better go in."

Ho recovered himself almost instantly. Eain was really falling in
large drops, and he showed the back of his hand with rain-drops on
it. But, he said not a single word in reference to the discovery that
had been told of, and, as they went iuto tho house, the business eye
of Mr. Lorry either detected, or fancied it detected, on his face, as it
turned towards Charles Darnay, the same singular look that had been
upon it when it turned towards him in the passages of tho Court
House.

Ho recovered himself so quickly, however, that Mr. Lorry had doubts
of his business eye. The arm of the golden giant in the hall was not
more steady than he was, when he stopped under it to remark to them
that ho was not yet proof against slight surprises (if he ever would
be), and that the rain had startled him.

Tea-time, and Miss Press making tea, with another fit of the jerks
upon her, and yet no Hundreds of people. Mr. Carton had lounged
in, but he made only Two.

The night was so very sultry, that although they sat with doors and
windows open, they were overpowered by heat. When the tea-table
was done with, they all moved to one of the windows, and looked out
into the heavy twilight. Lucie sat by her father ; Darnay sat beside
her ; Carton leaned against a window. The curtains were long and
white, and some of the thunder-gusts that whirled into the corner,
caught them up to the ceiling, and waved them like spectral wings.

" The rain-drops are still falling, large, heavy, and few," said Doctor
Manette. " It comes slowly."

" It comes surely," said Carton.

They spoke lo\y, as people watching and waiting mostly do; ao
people in a dark room, watching and waiting for Lightning, always do.

There was a great hurry in the streets, of people speeding away to
get shelter before the storm broke ; the wonderful corner for echoes
resounded with tho echoes of footsteps coming and going, yet not a
footstep was there.

" A multitude of people, and yet a solitude ! " said Darnay, when
they had listened for a while.

" Is it not impressive, Mr. Darnay ? " asked Lucie. " Sometimes,
I have sat here of an evening, until I have fancied — but even the shade
of a foolish fancy makes me shudder to-night, when all is so black
and solemn "

'•'• Let us shudder too. We may know what it is."

" It will seem nothing to you. Such whims are only impressive as

Echoes of a Crowd. 415

we originate them, I think ; they are not to bo communicated. I have
sometimes sat alone here of an evening, listening, until I have made
the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming
by-and-by into our lives."

" There is a great crowd coming one day into our lives, if that bo
BO," Sydney Carton struck in, in his moody way.

The footsteps were incessant, and the hurry of them became more
and more i-apid. The corner echoed and re-echoed with the tread of
feet ; some, as it seemed, under the windows ; some, as it seemed, in
the room ; some coming, some goiug, some breaking off, some stopping
altogether ; all in the distant streets, and not one within sight.

" Are all these footsteps destined to come to all of us, Miss Manette,
or are we to divide them among us ? "

" I don't know, Mr. Darnay ; I told you it was a foolish fancy, but
you asked for it. When I have yielded myself to it, I have been alone,
and then I have imagined them the footsteps of the people who are to
come into my life, and my father's."

" I take them into mine ! " said Carton. " I ask no questions and
make no stipulations. There is a great crowd bearing down upon us,

Miss Manette, and I see them by the Lightning." He added tho

last words, after there had been a vivid flash which had shown him
lounging in the window.

" And I hear them ! " he added again, after a peal of thunder.
" Here they come, fast, fierce, and furious ! "

It was the rush and roar of rain that he typified, and it stopped him,
for no voice could be heard in it. A memoi-able storm of thunder and
lightning broke with that sweep of water, and there was not a moment's
interval in crash, and fire, and rain, until after the moon rose at mid-
night.

The great bell of Saint Paul's was striking One in the cleared
air, when Mr. Lorry, escorted by Jerry, high-booted and bearing a
lantern, set forth on his return-passage to Clerkenwell. There were
solitary patches of road on the way between Soho and Clerkenwell, and
Mr. Lorry, mindful of footpads, always retained Jerry for this service :
though it was usually performed a good two hours earlier.

" What a night it has been ! Almost a night, Jerry," said Mr. Lorry,
" to bring the dead out of their graves."

" I never see tho night myself, master — nor yet I don't expect to —
what would do that," answered Jerry.

" Good-night, Mr. Carton," said the man of business. " Good-night,
Mr. Darnay. Shall we ever see such a night again, together ! "

Perhaps. Perhaps, see the great crowd of people with its rush and
roar, bearing down upon them, too.

CHAPTER Yll.

M0N8EIGNEUB IN TOWN.

MoKSEiGNEUB, One of the great lords in power at the Court, held his
fortnightly reception in his grand hotel in Paris. Monseigneur was
in his inner room, his sanctuary of sanctuaries, the Holiest of Holiests
to the crowd of worshippers in the suite of rooms Avithout. Mon-
seigneur was about to take his chocolate. Monseignexir could swallow
a great many things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds
supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France ; but, his morning's
chocolate could not so much as get into the throat of Monseigneur,
without the aid of four strong men besides the Cook.

Yes. It took four men, all four a-blaze with gorgeous decoration,
and the Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold
watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion
set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur's
lips. One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence ;
a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument
he bore for that function ; a third, presented the favoured napkin ;
a fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out. It
was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attend-
ants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring
Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if bis
chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men ; he must
have died of two.

Monseigneur had been out at a little supper last night, where the
Comedy and the Grand Opera wore charmingly represented. Mon-
seigneur was out at a little supper most nights, with fascinating company.
So polite and so impressible was Monseigneur, that the Comedy and
the Grand Opera had far more influence with him in the tiresome
articles of state affairs and state secrets, than the needs of all France.
A happy circumstance for France, as the like always is for all countries
similarly favoured ! — always was for England (by way of example), in
the regretted days of the merry Stuart who sold it.

Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public business,
which was, to let everything go on in its own way ; of particular
public business, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that it
must all go his way — tend to his own power and pocket. Of his
pleasures, general and particular, Monseigneur had the other truly
noble idea, that the world was made for them. The text of his order
(altered from the original by only a pronoun, which is not much) ran :
" The earth and the fulness thereof are mine, saith Monseigneur."

Yet, Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar embarrassments
crept into his affairs, both private and public j and he had, as to both

A Hopeful State of Society. 417

classes of affaii-s, allied himself perforce with a Farmer-General. As
to finances public, becanse Monseigneur could not make anything at
all of them, and must consequently let them out to somebody who
could ; as to finances private, because Farmer-Generals were rich, and
Monseigneur, after generations of great luxury and expense, was
growing poor. Hence Monseigneur had taken his sister from a con-
vent, while there was yet time to ward off the impending veil, the
cheapest gai-ment she could wear, and had bestowed her as a prize
upon a very rich Farmer- General, poor in family. Which Farmer-
General, carrying an appropriate cane with a golden apple on the top
of it, was now among the company in the outer rooms, much prostrated
before by mankind — always excepting superior mankind of the blood
of Monseigneur, who, his own wife included, looked down upon him
with the loftiest contempt.

A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty horses stood
in his stables, twenty-four male domestics sat in his halls, six body-
women waited on his wife. As one who pretended to do nothing but
plunder and forage where he could, the Farmer-General — howsoever
his matrimonial relations conduced to social morality — was at least
the greatest reality among the personages who attended at the hotel
of Monseigneur that day.

For, the rooms, though a beautiful scene to look at, and adorned
with every device of decoration that the taste and skill of the time
could achieve, were, in truth, not a sound business ; considered with
any reference to the scarecrows in the rags and nightcaps elsewhere
(and not so far off, either, but that the watching towers of Notre Dame,
almost equi-distant from the two extremes, could see them both), they
would have been an exceedingly uncomfortable business — if that could
have been anybody's business, at the house of Monseigneur. Military
officers destitute of military knowledge ; naval officers with no idea of
a ship ; civil officers without a notion of affairs ; brazen ecclesiastics,
of the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and
looser lives ; all totally unfit for their several callings, all lying
horribly in pretending to belong to them, but all nearly or remotely
of the order of Monseigneur, and therefore foisted on all public
employments from which anything was to be got; these were to be
told off by the score and the score. People not immediately connected
with Monseigneur or the State, yet equally unconnected with anything
that was real, or with lives passed in travelling by any straight road
to any true earthly end, were no less abundant. Doctors who made
great fortunes out of dainty remedies for imaginary disorders that
never existed, smiled upon their courtly patients in the ante-chambers
of Monseigneur. Projectors who had discovered every kind of remedy
for the little evils with which the State was touched, except the remedy
of setting to work in earnest to root out a single sin, poured their
distracting babble into any ears they could lay hold of, at the reception
of Monseigneui'. Unbelieving Philosophers who were remodelling

2£

41 8 A Tale of Two Cities,

the world with words, and making card-towers of Babel to scale the
skies with, talked with Unbelieving Chemists who had an eye on the
transmutation of metals, at this wonderful gathering accumulated by
Monseigneur. Exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding, which was
at that remarkable time — and has been since — to be known by its
fruits of indifference to every natural subject of human interest, were
in the most exemplary state of exhaustion, at the hotel of Monseigneur,
Such homes had these various notabilities left behind them in the fine
world of Paris, that the spies among the assembled devotees of Mon-
seigneur— forming a goodly half of the polite company — would have
found it hard to discover among the angels of that sphere one solitary
■wife, who, in her manners and appearance, owned to being a Mother.
Indeed, except for the mere act of bringing a troublesome creature
into this world — which does not go far towards the realisation of the
name of mother — there was no such thing known to the fashion.
Peasant women kept the unfashionable babies close, and brought them
Tip, and charming grandmammas of sixty dressed and supped as at
twenty.

The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in
attendance upon Monseigneur. In the outermost room were half a
dozen exceptional people who had had, for a few years, some vague
misgiving in them that things in general were going rather wrong.
As a promising way of setting them right, half of the half-dozen had
become members of a fantastic sect of Convulsionists, and were even
then considering within themselves whether they should foam, rage,
roar, and turn cataleptic on the spot — thereby setting up a highly
intelligible finger-post to the Future, for Monseigneur's guidance.
Besides these Dervishes, were other three who had rushed into another
sect, which mended matters with a jargon about " the Centre of Truth : "
holding that Man had got out of the Centre of Truth — which did not
need much demonstration — but had not got out of the Circumference,
and that he was to be kept from flying out of the Circumference, and
was even to be shoved back into the Centre, by fasting and seeing of
spirits. Among these, accordingly, much discoursing with spirits
went on — and it did a world of good which never became manifest.

But, the comfort was, that all the company at the grand hotel of
Monseigeur were perfectly dressed. If the Day of Judgment had
only been ascertained to be a dress day, everybody there would
have been eternally correct. Such frizzling and powdering and
sticking up of hair, such delicate complexions artificially preserved
and mended, such gallant swords to look at, and such delicate honour
to the sense of smell, would surely keep anything going, for ever and
ever. The exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding wore little
pendent trinkets that chinked as they languidly moved ; these golden
fetters rang like precious little bells ; and what with that ringing, and
with tlie rustle of silk and brocade and fine linen, there was a flutter in
the air that fanned Saint Antoine and his devouring hunger far away.

Dressed for Ever. ^ig

Dress was the one wnfailing talisman and charm used for keeping
all things in their places. Everybody was dressed for a Fancy Ball
that was never to leave off. From the Palace of the Tuileries, through
Monscigncur and the whole Court, through the Chambers, the
Tribunals of Justice, and all society (except the scarecrows), the
Fancy Ball descended to the Common Executioner : who, in pursuance
of the charm, was required to offtciate " frizzled, powdered, in a gold-
laced coat, pumps, and white silk stockings." At the gallows and the
wheel — the axe was a rarity — Monsieur Paris, as it was the episcopal
mode among his brother Professors of the provinces. Monsieur
Orleans, and the rest, to call him, presided in this dainty di'ess. And
who among the company at Monseigneur's reception in that seventeen
hundred and eightieth year of our Lord, could possibly doubt, that a
system rooted in a frizzled hangman, powdered, gold-laced, pumped,
and white-silk stockinged, would see the very stars out !

Monseigneur having eased his four men of their burdens and taken
his chocolate, caused the doors of the Holiest of Holiests to be thrown
open, and issued forth. Then, what submission, what cringing and
fiawning, what servility, what abject humiliation ! As to bowing
down in body and spirit, nothing in that way was left for Heaven —
which may have been one among other reasons why the worshippers
of Monseigneur never troubled it.

Bestowing a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper on
one happy slave and a wave of the hand on another, Monseigneur
affably passed through his rooms to the remote region of the Circum-
ference of Truth. There, Monseigneur turned, and came back again,
and so in due course of time got himself shut up in his sanctuary by
the chocolate sprites, and was seen no more.

The show being over, the flutter in the air became quite a little
storm, and the precious little bells went ringing down-stairs. There
was soon but one person left of all the crowd, and he, with his hat
under his arm and his snuff-box in his hand, slowly passed among
the mirrors on his way out.

" I devote you," said this person, stopping at the last door on his
way, and turning in the direction of the sanctuary, " to the Devil ! "

With that, he shook the snuff from his fingers as if he had shaken
the dust from his feet, and quietly walked down-staii"S.

He was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty in
manner, and with a face like a fine mask. A face of a transparent
paleness ; every feature in it clearly defined ; one set expression on
it. The nose, beautifully formed otherwise, was very slightly pinched
at the top of each nostril. In those two compressions, or dints, the
only little change that the face ever showed, resided. They persisted
in changing sometimes, and they would be occasionally dilated and
contracted by something like a faint pulsation ; then, they gave a look
of treachery, and cruelty, to the whole countenance. Examined with
attention, its capacity of helping such a look was to be found in the

420 A Tale of Two Cities.

line of the mouth, and the lines of the orbits of the eyes, being mticli
too horizontal and thin : still, in the effect the face made, it was a
handsome face, and a remarkable one.

Its owner went down-stairs into the court-yard, got into his
carriage, and drove away. Not many people had talked with him at
the reception ; he had stood in a little space apart, and Monseigneur
might have been warmer in his manner. It appeared, under the cir-
cumstances, rathM" agreeable to him to see the common people dis-
persed before his horses, and often barely escaping from being run
down. His man drove as if he were charging an enemy, and the
furious recklessness of the man brought no check into the face, or to
the lips, of the master. The complaint had sometimes made itself
audible, even in that deaf city and dumb age, that, in the narrow
streets without footways, the fierce patrician custom of hard driving
endangered and maimed the mere vulgar in a barbarous manner.
But, few cared enough for that to think of it a second time, and, in
this matter, as in all others, the common wretches were left to get out
of their difiSculties as they could.

"With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment of
consideration not easy to be understood in these days, the carriage
dashed through streets and swept round corners, with women scream-
ing before it, and men clutching each other and clutching children
out of its way. At last, swooping at a street corner by a fountain,
one of its wheels came to a sickening little jolt, and there was a loud
cry from a nimiber of voices, and the horses reared and plunged.

But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would not
have stopped ; carriages were often known to drive on, and leave their
wounded behind, and why not? But the frightened valet had got
down in a hurry, and there were twenty hands at the horses' bridles.

" What has gone wrong ? " said Monsieur, calmly looking out.

A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the
feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and
was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like a wild animal.

" Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis ! " said a ragged and submissive
man, " it is a child."

" Why does he make that abominable noise ? Is it his child ? "

" Excuse me. Monsieur the Marquis — it is a pity — yes."

The fountain was a little removed ; for the street opened, where it
was, into a space some ten or twelve yards square. As the tall man
suddenly got up from the ground, and came running at the carriage,
Monsieur the Marquis clapped his hand for an instant on his sword-
hilt.

" Killed ! " shrieked the man, in wild desperation, extendiag both
arms at their length above his head, and staring at him. " Dead ! "

The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the Marquis.
There was nothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him but
watchfulness and eagerness ; there was no visible menacing or anger.

Only a Child run over. 421

Neither did the people say anything ; after the first cry, they had been
silent, and they remained so. The voice of the submissive man who
had spoken, was flat and tame in its extreme submission. Monsieur
the Marquis ran his eyes over them all, as if they had been mere rats
come out of their holes.

He took out his purse.

" It is extiaordinaiy to me," said he, " that you people cannot take
care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for
ever in the way. How do I know what injury you have done my
horses ? See ! Give him that."

He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the heads
craned forward that all the eyes might look down at it as it fell. The
tall man called out again with a most unearthly cry, " Dead ! "

He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for whom the
rest made way. On seeing him, the miserable creature fell upon his
shoulder, sobbing and crying, and pointing to the fountain, where
some women were stooping over the motionless bundle, and moving
gently about it. They were as silent, however, as the men.

" I know all, I know all," said the last comer. " Be a brave man,
my Gaspard ! It is better for the poor little plaything to die so, than
to live. It has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived
an hour as happily ?"

" You are a philosophei*, you there," said the Marquis, smiling.
" How do they call you ? "

" They call me Defarge."

« Of what trade ? "

" Monsieur the Marquis, vendor of wine."

" Pick up that, philosopher and vendor of wine," said the Marquis,
throwing him another gold coin, "and spend it as you will. The
horses there ; are they right ? "

Without deigning to look at the assemblage a second time, Monsieur
the Marquis leaned back in his seat, and was just being driven away
with the air of a gentleman who had accidentally broke some common
thing, and had paid for it, and could afiford to pay for it ; when his
ease was suddenly disturbed by a coin flying into his carriage, and
ringing on its floor.

" Hold ! " said Monsieur the Marquis. " Hold the horses ! Who
threw that ? "

He looked to the spot where Defarge the vendor of wine had stood,
a moment before ; but the wretched father was grovelling on his face
on the pavement in that spot, and the figure that stood beside him was
the figure of a dark stout woman, knitting.

" You dogs ! " said the Marquis, but smoothly, and with an un-
changed front, except as to the spots on his nose : " I would ride over
any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from the earth. If I
knew which rascal threw at the carriage, and if that brigand were
sufficiently near it, he should be crushed under the wheels."

422 A Tale of Two Cities.

So cowed was tboir condition, and so long and hard thoir experience
of wliat such a man could do to them, within the law and beyond it,
that not a voice, or a hand, or even an eye was raised. Among the
men, not one. Bnt the woman who stood knitting looked up steadily,
and looked the Marquis in the face. It was not for his dignity to notice
it; his contemptuous eyes passed over her, and over all the other
rats ; and he leaned back in his seat again, and gave the word
« Go on ! "

He was driven on, and other carriages came whirling by in quick
succession ; the Minister, the State-Projector, the Farmer-General,
the Doctor, the Lawyer, the Ecclesiastic, the Grand Opera, the
Comedy, the whole Fancy Ball in a bright continuous flow, came
whirling by. The rats had crept out of their holes to look on, and
they remained looking on for hours ; soldiers and police often passing
between them and the spectacle, and making a barrier behind which
they slunk, and through which they peeped. The father had long
ago taken up his bundle and hidden himself away with it, when the
women who had tended the bundle while it lay on the base of the
fountain, sat there watching the running of the water and the rolling
of the Fancy Ball — when the one woman who had stood conspicuous,
knitting, still knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate. The water
of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran into evening, so
much life in the city ran into death according to rule, time and tide
waited for no man, the rats were sleeping close together in their dark
holes again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran
their course.

CHAPTER VIII.

M0N8EIGNEUB IN THE COUNTRY.

A BEAUTIFUL landscape, with the corn bright in it, but not abundant.
Patches of poor rye where com should have been, patches of poor
peas and beans, patches of most coarse vegetable substitutes for wheat.
On inanimate nature, as on the men and women who cultivated it, a
prevalent tendency towards an appearance of vegetating unwillingly
— a dejected disposition to give up, and wither away.

Monsieur the Marquis in his travelling carriage (which might have
been lighter), conducted by four post-horses and two postilions, fagged
up a steep hill. A blush on the countenance of Monsieur the Marquis
was no impeachment of his high breeding ; it was not from within ;
it was occasioned by an external circumstance beyond his control —
the setting sun.

The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling carriage when

In tlu Country. 423

it gaiued tho hill-top, that its occnpant was steeped in crimson. " It
will die ont," said Monsieur the Marquis, glancing at his hands,
" directly."

In effect, the snn was so low that it dipped at the moment. When
the heavy drag had been adjusted to the wheel, and the carnage slid
downhill, with a cinderous smell, in a cloud of dust, the red glow
departed quickly ; the sun and the Marquis going down together,
there was no glow loft when the drag was taken off.

But, there remained a broken country, bold and open, a little
village at the bottom of the hill, a broad sweep and rise beyond it, a
church-tower, a windmill, a forest for the chase, and a crag with a
fortress on it used as a piison. Eound upon all these darkening
objects as the night drew on, the Marquis looked, with the air of one
who was coming near home.

The village had its one poor street, with its poor brewery, poor
tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays of post-horses, poor
fountain, all usual poor appointments. It had its poor people too.
All its people were poor, and many of them were sitting at their
doors, shredding spare onions and the like for supper, while many
were at the fountain, washing leaves, and grasses, and any such small
yieldings of the earth that could be eaten. Expressive signs of what
made them poor, were not wanting ; the tax for the state, the tax for
the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to bo
paid here and to be paid there, according to solemn inscription in the
little village, until the wonder was, that there was any village left
unswallowed.

Few children were to be seen, and no dogs. As to the men and
women, their choice on earth was stated in the prospect — Life on the
lowest terms that could sustain it, down in the little village under
the mill ; or captivity and Death in the dominant prison on the crag.

Heralded by a courier in advance, and by the cracking of his
postilions' whips, which twined snake-like about their heads in the
evening air, as if he came attended by the Fuiies, Monsieiir the
Marquis di'ew up in his travelling carriage at the posting-house gate.
It was hard by the fountain, and the peasants suspended their ojjera-
tions to look at him. He looked at them, and saw in them, without
knowing it, the slow sure filing down of misery-worn face and figure,
that was to make the meagreness of Frenchmen an English super-
stition which should survive the truth through the best part of
a hundi'ed years.

Monsieur the Marquis cast his eyes over the submissive faces that
drooped before him, as the like of himself had drooped before Mon-
seigneur of the Court — only the difference was, tnat these faces
drooped merely to suffer and not to propitiate — when a grizzled
mender of the roads joined the group.

" Bring me hither that fellow 1 " said the Marquis to the courier.

The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the other fellows closed

424 ^ Tale of Two Cities.

round to look and listen, in the manner of the people at the Paris
fountain.

" I passed you on the road ? "

" Monseigueur, it is true. I had the honour of being passed on
the road."

" Coming up the hill, and at the top of the hill, both ? "

" Monseigneur, it is true."

" What did you look at, so fixedly ? "

" Monseigneur, I looked at the man."

He stooped a little, and with his tattered blue cap pointed under
the carriage. All his follows stooped to look under the carriage.

*' What man, pig ? And why look there ? "

" Pardon, Monseigneur ; he swung by the chain of the shoe — the
drag."

*' Who ? " demanded the traveller.

" Monseigneur, the man."

" May the Devil carry away these idiots ! How do you call the
man ? You know all the men of this part of the country. Who
was he ? "

"Your clemency, Monseigneur! He was not of this part of the
country. Of all the days of my life, I never saw him."

" Swinging by the chain ? To be sutfocated ? "

" With your gracious permission, that was the wonder of it, Mon-
seigneur. His head hanging over — like this ! "

He turned himself sideways to the carriage, and leaned back, with
his face thrown up to the sky, and his head hanging down; then
recovered himself, fumbled with his cap, and made a bow.

" What was he like ? "

" Monseigneur, he was whiter than the miller. All covered with
dust, white as a spectre, tall as a spectre ! "

The picture produced an immense sensation in the little crowd ;
but all eyes, without comparing notes with other eyes, looked at
Monsieur the Marquis. Perhaps, to observe whether he had any
spectre on his conscience.

• " Truly, you did well," said the Marquis, felicitously sensible that
such vermin were not to ruffle him, " to see a thief accompanying my
carriage, and not open that great mouth of yours. Bah ! Put him
aside, Monsieur Gabelle ! "

Monsieur Gabelle was the Postmaster, and some other taxing
functionary united; he had come out with great obsequiousness to
assist at this examination, and had held the examined by the drapery
of his arm in an official manner.

" Bah ! Go aside ! " said Monsieur Gabelle.

" Lay hands on this stranger if he seeks to lodge in your village
to-night, and be sure that his business is honest, Gabelle."

" Monseigneur, I am flattered to devote myself to your orders."

" Did he run away, fellow ? — where is that Accursed ? "

A Petition to Monseigneur, 425

The accursed was already under the carriage with some half-dozen
particular friends, pointing out the chain with his blue cap. Some
haK-dozen other particular friends promptly hauled him out, and
presented him breathless to Monsieur the Marquis.

" Did the man run away. Dolt, when we stopped for the drag ? "

" Monseigneur, ho precipitated himself over the hill-side, head first,
as a person plunges into the river."

" See to it, Gabelle. Go on ! "

The half-dozen who were peering at the chain were still among the
wheels, like sheep ; the wheels turned so suddenly that they were
lucky to save their skins and bones ; they had very little else to save,
or they might not have been so fortunate.

The burst with which the carriage started out of the village and
up the rise beyond, was soon checked by the steepness of the hill.
Gradually, it subsided to a foot pace, swinging and lumbering upward
among the many sweet scents of a summer night. The postilions,
with a thousand gossamer gnats circling about them in lieu of the
Furies, quietly mended the points to the lashes of their whips ; the
valet walked by the horses ; the courier was audible, trotting on
ahead into the dim distance.

At the steepest point of the hill there was a little burial-ground,
with a Cross and a new large figure of Our Saviour on it ; it was a
poor figure in wood, done by some inexperienced rustic carver, but he
had studied the figure from the life — his own life, maybe — for it was
dreadfully spare and thin.

To this distressful emblem of a great distress that had long been
growing worse, and was not at its worst, a woman was kneeling. She
turned her head as the carriage came up to her, rose quickly, and
presented herself at the carriage-door.

" It is you, Mionseigneur ! Monseigneur, a petition."

With an exclamation of impatience, but with his unchangeable face,
Monseigneur looked out.

'* How, then ! What is it ? Always petitions ! "

" Monseigneur. For the love of the great God ! My husband, the
forester."

" What of your husband, the forester ? Always the same with you
people. He cannot pay something ? "

" He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead."

" Well ! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you ? "

" Alas, no, Monseigneur ! But he lies yonder, under a little heap
of poor grass."

" Weil ? "

" Monseigneur, there are so many little heaps of poor grass ? "

"Again, well?"

She looked an old woman, but was young. Her manner was one
of passionate grief; by turns she clasped her veinous and knotted
hands together with wild energy, and laid one of them on thQ

426 A Tale of Tivo Cities.

carriage-door — tenderly, caressingly, as if it had been a human breast,
and could bo expected to feel the appealing touch.

" Monseigaeur, hear me ! Monseigneur, hear my petition ! My
husband died of want ; so many die of want ; so many more will die
of want."

" Again, well ? Can I feed them ? "

" Monseigneur, the good God knows ; but I don't ask it. My petition
is, that a morsel of stone or wood, with my husband's name, may be
placed over him to show where he lies. Otherwise, the place will be
quickly forgotten, it will never be found when I am dead of the same
malady, I shall be laid under some other heap of poor grass. Mon.
seigneur, they are so many, they increase so fast, there is so much
want. Monseigneur ! Monseigneur ! "

The valet had put her away from the door, the carriage had broken
into a brisk trot, the postilions had quickened the pace, she was left
far behind, and Monseigneur, again escorted by the Furies, was rapidly
diminishing the league or two of distance that remained between him
and his chateau.

The sweet scents of the summer night rose all aroimd him, and rose,
as the rain falls, impartially, on the dusty, ragged, and toil-worn group
at the fountain not far away ; to whom the mender of roads, with the
aid of the blue cap without which ho was nothing, still enlarged upon
his man like a spectre, as long as they could bear it. By degrees, as
they could bear no more, they dropped off one by one, and lights
twinkled in little casements ; which lights, as the casements darkened,
and more stars came out, seemed to have shot up into the sky instead
of having been extinguished.

The shadow of a large high-roofed house, and of many overhanging
trees, was upon Monsieur the Marquis by that time ; and the shadow
was exchanged for the light of a flambeau, as his carriage stopped, and
the great door of his chateau was opened to him.

" Monsieur Charles, whom I expect ; is ho arrived from England ? "

" Monseigneur, not yet."

CHAPTER IX.

THE GOEGON's head.

It was a heavy mass of building, that chateau of Monsieur the Marquis,
with a large stone court-yard before it, and two stone sweeps of stair-
case meeting in a stone terrace before the principal door. A stony
business altogether, with heavy stone balustrades, and stone urns, and
stone flowers, and stone faces of men, and stone heads of lions, in all

Monseignenr at Home, 427

directions. As if the Gorgon's head had surveyed it, when it was
finished, two centuries ago.

Up the broad flight of shallow steps, Monsieur the Marquis, flambeau
preceded, went from his carriage, sufficiently disturbing the darkness
to elicit loud remonstrance from an owl in the roof of the great pile
of stable building away among the trees. All else was so quiet, that
the flambeau carried up the steps, and the other flambeau held at tho
great door, burnt as if they were in a close room of state, instead of
being in the open night-air. Other sound than the owl's voice there
was none, save the falling of a fountain into its stone basin ; for, it
was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together,
and then heave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again.

The great door clanged behind him, and Monsieur the Marquis
crossed a hall grim with certain old boar-spears, swords, and knives
of the chase ; grimmer with certain heavy riding-rods and riding-
whips, of which many a peasant, gone to his benefactor Death, had
felt the weight when his lord was angry.

Avoiding the larger rooms, which were dark and made fast for the
night. Monsieur the Marquis, with his flambeau-bearer going on before,
went up the staircase to a door in a corridor. This thrown open,
admitted him to his own private apartment of three rooms : his bed-
chamber and two others. High vaulted rooms with cool uncarpcted
floors, great dogs upon the hearths for the burning of wood in winter
time, and all luxuiies befitting the state of a marquis in a luxui-ious
age and country. The fashion of the last Louis but one, of the lino
that was never to break — tho fourteenth Louis — was conspicuous in
their rich furniture ; but, it was diversified by many objects that wero
illustrations of old pages in the history of France.

A supper-table was laid for two, in the third of the rooms ; a round
room, in one of the chateau's four extingnisher-topped towers. A
small lofty room, with its window wide open, and the wooden jalousie-
blinds closed, so that the dark night only showed in slight horizontal
lines of black, alternating with their broad lines of stone colour.

" My nephew," said the Marquis, glancing at the supper prepara-
tion ; " they said he was not arrived."

Nor was he ; but, he had been expected with Monseignenr.

" Ah ! It is not probable he will arrive to-night ; neverthless, leave
the table as it is. I shall be ready in a quarter of an hour."

In a quarter of an hour Monseignenr was ready, and sat down alone
to his sumptuous and choice supper. His chair was opposite to the
window, and he had taken his soup, and was raising his glass of
Bordeaux to his lips, when he put it down.

"What is that?" he calmly asked, looking with attention at the
horizontal lines of black and stone colour.

« Monseignenr ? That ? "

" Outside the blinds. Open the blinds."

It was done.

428 A Tale of Tzvo Cities.

"Well?"

" Monseigneur, it is nothing. The trees and the night are all that
are here."

The servant who spoke, had thrown the blinds wide, had looked out
into the vacant darkness, and stood, with that blank behind him, look-
ing round for instructions.

" Good," said the imperturbable master. " Close them again."

That was done too, and the Marquis went on with his supper. He
was half way through it, when he again stopped with his glass in his
hand, hearing the sound of wheels. It came on briskly, and came up
to the front of the chateau.

" Ask who is arrived."

It was the nephew of Monseigneur. He had been some few leagues
behind Monseigneur, early in the afternoon. He had diminished the
distance rapidly, but not so rapidly as to come up with Monseigneur
on the road. He had heard of Monseigneur, at the posting-houses, as
being before him.

He was to be told (said Monseigneur) that supper awaited him then
and there, and that he was prayed to come to it. In a little while he
came. He had been known in England as Charles Darnay.

Monseigneur received him in a courtly manner, but they did not
shake hands.

"You left Paris yesterday, sir?" he said to Monseigneur, as he
took his seat at table,

" Yesterday. And you ? "

" I come direct."

« From London ? "

"Yes."

"You have been a long time coming," said the Marquis, with a
smile.

" On the contrary ; I come direct."

"Pardon me! I mean, not a long time on the journey; a long
time intending the journey."

" I have been detained by " — the nephew stopped a moment in his
answer — " various business."

" Without doubt," said the polished uncle.

So long as a servant was present, no other words passed between
them. When coffee had been served and they were alone together,
the nephew, looking at the uncle and meeting the eyes of the face
that was like a fine mask, opened a conversation.

•* I have come back, sir, as you anticipate, pursuing the object that
took me away. It carried me into great and unexpected peril ; but it
is a sacred object, and if it had carried me to death I hope it would
have sustained me."

" Not to death," said the uncle ; " it is not necessary to say, to
death."

" I doubt, sir," returned the nephew, " whether, if it had carried

Monseigneur and his Nephew. 429

me to the utmost brink of death, you would have cared to stop me
there."

The deepened marks in the nose, and the lengthening of the fine
straight lines in the cruel face, looked ominous as to that ; the uncle
made a graceful gesture of protest, which was so clearly a slight form
of good breeding that it was not reassuring.

" Indeed, sir," pursued the nephew, " for anything I know, you
may have expressly worked to give a more suspicious appearance to
the suspicious circumstances that surrounded me."

" No, no, no," said the uncle, pleasantly.

" But, however that may be," resumed the nephew, glancing at him
with deep distrust, " I know that your diplomacy would stop me by
auy means, and would know no scruple as to means."

" My friend, I told you so," said the uncle, with a fine pulsation in
the two marks. *' Do me the favour to recall that I told you so, long
ago."

" I recall it."

" Thank you," said the Marquis — very sweetly indeed.

His tone lingered in the air, almost like the tone of a musical
instrument.

" In effect, sir," pursued the nephew, " I believe it to be at once
your bad fortune, and my good fortune, that has kept me out of a
prison in France here."

" I do not quite understand," returned the uncle, sipping his coffee.
" Dare I ask you to explain ? "

" I believe that if you were not in disgrace with the Court, and had
not been overshadowed by that cloud for years past, a letter de cachet
would have sent me to some fortress indefinitely."

" It is possible," said the uncle, with great calmness. " For the
honour of the family, I could even resolve to incommode you to that
extent. Pray excuse me ! "

" I perceive that, happily for me, the Eeception of the day before
yesterday was, as usual, a cold one," observed the nephew.

"I would not say happily, my friend," returned the uncle, with
refined politeness ; " I would not be sure of that. A good opportimity
for consideration, surrounded by the advantages of solitude, might
influence your destiny to far greater advantage than you influence it
for yourself. But it is useless to discuss the question. I am, as you
say, at a disadvantage. These little instruments of correction, these
gentle aids to the power and honour of families, these slight favours
that might so incommode you, are only to be obtained now by interest
and importunity. They are sought by so many, and they are granted
(comparatively) to so few ! It used not to be so, but France in all
such things is changed for the worse. Our not remote ancestors held
the right of life and death over the surrounding vulgar. From this
room, many such dogs have been taken out to be hanged ; in the next
room (my bedroom), one fellow to our knowledge, was poniarded on

430 A Tale of Two Cities.

the spot for professing some insolent delicacy respecting his daugiiter
• — Ms daughter ? We have lost many privileges ; a new philosophy
has become the mode ; and the assertion of our station, in these days,
might (I do not go so far as to say would, but might) cause us real
inconvenience. All very bad, very bad ! "

The Marquis took a gentle little pinch of snuff, and shook his
head ; as elegantly despondent as ho could becomingly be of a country
Btill containing himself, that great means of regeneration.

" We have so asserted our station, both in the old time and iu the
modern time also," said the nephew, gloomily, " that I believe our
name to be more detested than any name in France."

" Let us hope so," said the uncle. " Detestation of the high is the
involuntary homage of the low."

" There is not," pursued the nephew, in his former tone, " a face I
can look at, in all this country round about us, which looks at me
with any deference on it but tlie dark deference of fear and slavery."

" A compliment," said the Marquis, " to the grandeur of the family,
merited by the manner in which the family has sustained its grandeur.
Hah ! " And he took another gentle little pinch of snuff, and lightly
crossed his legs.

But, when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, covered his
eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, the fine mask looked
at him sideways with a stronger concenti*ation of keenness, closeness,
and dislike, than was comportable with its wearer's assumption of
indifference.

" Eepression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference
of fear and slavery, my friend," observed the Marquis, " will keep the
dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof," looking up to it,
" shuts out the sky."

That might not be so long as the Marquis supposed. If a picture
of the chateau as it was to be a very few years hence, and of fifty like
it as they too were to be a very few years hence, could have been
shown to him that night, he might have been at a loss to claim his
own from the ghastly, fire-charred, plunder-wrecked ruins. As for
the roof he vaunted, he might liave found that shutting out the sky in
a new way — to wit, for ever, from the eyes of the bodies into which
its lead was fired, out of the barrels of a hundred thousand muskets.

" Meanwhile," said the Marquis, " I will preserve the honour and
repose of the family, if you will not. But you must be fatigued.
Shall we terminate our conference for the night ? "

" A moment more."

" An hour, if you please."

" Sir," said the nephew, " we have done wrong, and are reaping the
fruits of wrong."

" TFe have done wrong ? " repeated the Marquis, with an inquiring
smile, and delicately pointing, first to his nephew, then to himself.

*' Our family ; our honourable family, whose honour is of so much

Tlie UnpoliU New School. 431

account to both of us, in such different ways. Even in my father's
time, we did a world of wrong, injuring every human creature who
came between us and our pleasure, whatever it was. Why need I
speak of my father's time, when it is equally yours ? Can I separate
my father's twin-brother, joint inheritor, and next successor, from
himself?"

" Death has done that ! " said the Marquis.

" And has left me," answered the nephew, " bound to a system that
is frightful to me, responsible for it, but powerless in it ; seeking to
exocuto the last request of my dear mother's lips, and obey the last
look of my dear mother's eyes, which implored me to have mercy and
to redress ; and tortured by seeking assistance and power in vain."

" Seeking them from me, my nephew," said the Marquis, touching
him on the breast with his forefinger — they were now standing by the
hearth — " you will for ever seek them in vain, be assured."

Every fine straight lino in the clear whiteness of his face, was
cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he stood looking quietly
at his nephew, with his snutF-box in his hand. Once again he touched
him on the breast, as though his finger wei-e the fine point of a small
Bword, with which, in delicate finesse, he i-an him through the body,
and said,

" My friend, I will die, perpetuating the system under which I have
Hved."

When he had said it, he took a culminating pinch of snuff, and put
his box in his pocket.

" Better to be a rational creature," he added then, after ringing a
small bell on the table, " and accept your natural destiny. But you
are lost, Monsieur Charles, I see."

" This property and France ai'e lost to me," said the nephew,
sadly ; " I renounce them."

" Are they both yours to renounce ? France may be, but is the
property ? It is scarcely worth mentioning ; but, is it yet ? "

" I had no intention, in the words I used, to claim it yet. If it
passed to me from you, to-morrow "

" Which I have the vanity to hope is not probable."

" — or twenty years hence "

" You do me too much honour," said the Marquis ; " still, I prefer
that supposition."

" — I would abandon it, and live otherwise and elsewhere. It is
little to relinquish. What is it but a wilderness of misery and ruin ! "

" Hah ! " said the Marquis, glancing round the luxurious room.

" To the eye it is fair enough, here ; but seen in its integrity, under
the sky, and by the daylight, it is a crumbling tower of waste, mis-
management, extortion, debt, mortgage, oppression, hunger, nakedness,
and suffering."

" Hah ! " said the Marquis again, in a well-satisfied manner.

"If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some hands better

432 A Tale of Two Cities.

qualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is possible) from the weight
that drags it down, so that the miserable people who cannot leave it
and who have been long wi'ung to the last point of endurance, may, in
another generation, suffer less ; but it is not for me. There is a curse
on it, and on all this land."

" And you ? " said the uncle. " Forgive my curiosity ; do you,
under your new philosophy, graciously intend to live ? "

"I must do, to live, what others of my countrymen, even with
nobility at their backs, may have to do some day — work."

" In England, for example ? "

" Yes. The family honour, sir, is safe from me in this country.
Tlie family name can suffer from me in no other, for I bear it in no
other."

The ringing of the bell had caused the adjoining bedchamber to be
lighted. It now shone brightly, through the door of communication.
The Marquis looked that way, and listened for the retreating step of
his valet.

" England is very attractive to you, seeing how indifferently you
have prospered there," he observed then, turning his calm face to his
nephew with a smile.

" I have already said, that for my prospering there, I am sensible
I may be indebted to you, sir. For the rest, it is my Refuge."

" They say, those boastful English, that it is the Refuge of many.
You know a compatriot who has found a Refuge there ? A Doctor ? "

" Yes."

" With a daughter ? "

"Yes."

" Yes," said the Marquis. " You are fatigued. Good-night ! "

As he bent his head in his most courtly manner, there was a secrecy
in his smiling face, and he conveyed an air of mystery to those words,
which struck the eyes and ears of his nephew forcibly. At the same
time, the thin straight lines of the setting of the eyes, and the thin
straight lips, and the markings in the nose, curved with a sarcasm
that looked handsomely diabolic.

" Yes," repeated the Marquis. " A Doctor with a daughter. Yes.
So commences the new philosophy ! You are fatigued. Good-night ! "

It would have been of as much avail to interrogate any stone face
outside the chateau as to interrogate that face of his. The nephew
looked at him, in vain, in passing on to the door.

" Good-night ! " said the uncle. " I look to the pleasure of seeing
you again in the morning. Good repose ! Light Monsieur my nephew
to his chamber there ! And burn Monsieur my nephew in his bed, if
you will," he added to himself, before he rang his little bell again, and
summoned his valet to his own bedroom.

The valet come and gone. Monsieur the Marquis walked to and fro
in his loose chamber-robe, to prepare himself gently for sleep, that
hot still night. Rustling about the room, his soffcly-slippered feet

A Summer Night. 433

making no noise on the floor, he moved like a refined tiger : — looked
like some enchanted marquis of the impenitently wicked sort, in story,
whose periodical change into tiger form was either just going oflF, or
just coming on.

He moved from end to end of his voluptuous bedroom, looking
again at the scraps of the day's journey that came unbidden into his
mind ; the slow toil up the hill at sunset, the setting sun, the descent,
the mill, the prison on the crag, the little village in the hollow, the
peasants at the fountain, and the mender of roads with his blue cap
pointing out the chain under the carriage. That fountain suggested
the Paris fountain, the little bundle lying on the step, the women
bending over it, and the tall man with his arms up, crying, " Dead ! "

"I am cool now," said Monsieur the Marquis, "and may go to
bed."

So, leaving only one light burning on the large hearth, he let his
thin gauze curtains fall around him, and heard the night break its
silence with a long sigh as he composed himself to sleep.

The stone faces on the outer walls stared blindly at the black night
for three heavy hours ; for three heavy houi-s, the horses in the stables
rattled at their racks, the dogs barked, and the owl made a noise with
very little resemblance in it to the noise conventionally assigned to the
owl by men-poets. But it is the obstinate custom of such creatures
hardly ever to say what is set down for them.

For three heavy houi's, the stone faces of the chateau, lion and
human, stared blindly at the night. Dead darkness lay on all the
landscape, dead darkness added its own hush to the hushing dust on
all the roads. The burial-place had got to the pass that its little
heaps of poor grass were undistinguishable from one another ; the
figure on the Cross might have come down, for anything that could
be seen of it. In the village, taxers and taxed were fast asleep.
Dreaming, perhaps, of banquets, as the starved usually do, and of ease
and rest, as the driven slave and the yoked ox may, its lean inhabitants
slept soundly, and were fed and freed.

The fountain in the village flowed unseen and unheard, and the
fountain at the chateau dropped unseen and unheard — both melting
away, like the minutes that were falling from the spring of Time —
through three dark hours. Then, the grey water of both began to be
ghostly in the light, and the eyes of the stone faces of the chateau
were opened.

Lighter and lighter, until at last the sun touched the tops of the
still trees, and poured its radiance over the hill. In the glow, the
water of the chateau fountain seemed to turn to blood, and the stone
faces crimsomed. The carol of the birds was loud and high, and, on
the weather-beaten sill of the great window of the bed-chamber of
Monsieur the Marquis, one little bird sang its sweetest song with all
its might. At this, the nearest stone face seemed to stare amazed,
and, with open mouth and dropped under-jaw, looked awe-stricken.

2f

434 "^ "^^^ ^f ^'^^ Cities,

Now, the sun was fall up, and movement began in the village.
Casement windows opened, crazy doors were unbarred, and people
came forth shivering — chilled, as yet, by the new sweet air. Thou
began the rarely lightened toil of the day among the village popula-
tion. Some, to the fountain ; some, to the fields ; men and women
here, to dig and delve ; men and women there, to see to the poor
live stock, and lead the bony cows out, to such pasture as could be
found by the roadside. In the church and at the Cross, a kneeling
figure or two ; attendant on the latter prayers, the led cow, trying for
a breakfast among the weeds at its foot.

The chateau awoke later, as became its quality, but awoke gradually
and surely. First, the lonely boar-spears and knives of the chase had
been reddened as of old ; then, had gleamed trenchant in the morning
sunshine ; now, doors and windows were thrown open, horses in their
stables looked round over their shoulders at the light and freshness
pouring in at doorways, leaves sparkled and rustled at iron-grated
windows, dogs pulled hard at their chains, and reared impatient to be
loosed.

All these trivial incidents belonged to the routine of life, and the
return of morning. Surely, not so the ringing of the great bell of the
chateau, nor the running up and down the stairs ; nor the hurried
figures on the terrace ; nor the booting and tramping here and there
and everywhere, nor the quick saddling of horses and riding away ?

What winds conveyed this hurry to the grizzled mender of roads,
already at work on the hill-top beyond the village, with his day's
dinner (not much to carry) lying in a bundle that it was worth no
crow's while to peck at, on a heap of stones ? Had the birds, carrying
some grains of it to a distance, dropped one over him as they sow
chance seeds ? Whether or no, the mender of roads ran, on the sultry
morning, as if for his life, down the hill, knee-high in dust, and never
stopped till he got to the fountain.

All the people of the village were at the fountain, standing about
in their depressed manner, and whispering low, but showing no other
emotions than grim curiosity and surprise. The led cows, hastily
brought in and tethered to anything that would hold them, were look-
ing stupidly on, or lying down chewing the cud of nothing particularly
repaying theii* trouble, which they had picked up in their interrupted
saunter. Some of the people of the chateau, and some of those of the
posting-house, and all the taxing authorities, were armed more or less,
and were crowded on the other side of the little street in a purpose-
less way, that was highly fraught with nothing. Already, the mender
of roads had penetrated into the midst of a group of fifty particular
friends, and was smiting himself in the breast with his blue cap.
What did all this portend, and what portended the swift hoisting-up
of Monsieur Gabelle behind a servant on horseback, and the conveying
away of the said Gabelle (double-laden though the horse was), at a
gallop, like a new version of the German ballad of Leonora ?

One Stone Face too many. 435

It portended that there was one stone face too many, np at the
chateau.

The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night, and had
added the one stone face wanting ; the stone face for which it had
waited through about two hundred years.

It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis. It was like a
fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified. Driven homo
into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round
its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was scrawled :

" Drive him fast to hia tomb. This, from Jacquks."

CHAPTER X.

TWO PROMISES.

More months, to the number of twelve, had come and gone, and Mr.
Charles Damay was established in England as a higher teacher of tho
French language who was conversant with French literature. In this
age, he would have been a Professor ; in that age, ho was a Tutor.
He read with young men who could find any leisure and interest for
the study of a living tongue spoken all over the world, and he culti-
vated a taste for its stores of knowledge and fancy. He could write of
them, besides, in sound English, and render them into sound English.
Such masters were not at that time easily foimd ; Princes that had
been, and Kings that were to be, were not yet of the Teacher class,
and no ruined nobUity had dropped out of Tellson's ledgers, to turn
cooks and carpenters. As a tutor, whoso attainments made the
student's way unusually pleasant and profitable, and as an elegant
translator who brought something to his work besides mere dictionary
knowledge, young Darnay soon became known and encouraged. He
was well acquainted, moreover, with the circumstances of his country,
and those were of ever-growing interest. So, with great perseverance
and untiring industry, he prospered.

In London, he had expected neither to walk on pavements of gold,
nor to lie on beds of roses ; if he had had any such exalted expect-a-
tion, he would not have prospered. He had expected labour, and he
found it, and did it, and made the best of it. In this, his prosperity
consistod.

A certain portion of his time was passed at Cambridge, where he
read with undergraduates as a sort of tolerated smuggler who drove a
contraband trade in European languages, instead of conveying Greek
and Latin through the Custom-house. The rest of his time he passed
in London.

Now, from the days when it was always summer in Eden, to these

43^ A Tale of Two Cities.

days when it is mostly winter iu fallen latitudes^ the world of a man
has invariably gone one way — Charles Camay's way — the way of the
love of a woman.

He had loved Lucie Manette from the hour of his danger. He had
never heard a sound so sweet and dear as the sound of her compas-
sionate voice ; he had never seen a face so tenderly beautiful, as hers
when it was confronted with his own on the edge of the grave that had
been dug for him. But, he had not yet spoken to her on the subject ;
the assassination at the deserted chateau far away beyond the heaving
water and the long, long, dusty roads — the solid stone chateau which
had itself become the mere mist of a dream — had been done a year,
and he had never yet, by so much as a single spoken word, disclosed
to her the state of his heart.

That he had his reasons for this, he knew full well. It was again
a summer day when, lately arrived in London from his college occu-
pation, he turned into the quiet comer in Soho, bent on seeking an
opportunity of opening his mind to Doctor Manette. It was the
close of the summer day, and he knew Lucie to be out with Miss
Press.

He found the Doctor reading in his arm-chair at a window. The
energy which had at once supported him under his old sufferings and
aggravated their sharpness, had been gradually restored to him. He
was now a very energetic man indeed, with great firmness of purpose,
strength of resolution, and vigour of action. In his recovered energy
he was sometimes a little fitful and sudden, as he had at first been in
the exercise of his other recovered faculties ; but, this had never been
frequently observable, and had grown more and more rare.

He studied much, slept little, sustained a great deal of fatigue with
ease, and was equably cheerful. To him, now entered Charles Darnay,
at sight of whom he laid aside his book and held out his hand.

" Charles Darnay ! I rejoice to see you. We have been counting on
your return these three or four days past. Mr. Stryver and Sydney
Carton were both here yesterday, and both made you out to be more
than due."

" I am obliged to them for their interest in the matter," he answered,
a little coldly as to them, though very warmly as to the Doctor.
" Miss Manette "

" Is well," said the Doctor, as he stopped short, " and your return
will delight us all. She has gone out on some household matters, but
will soon be home."

" Doctor Manette, I knew she was from home. I took the oppor-
tunity of her being from home, to beg to speak to you."

There was a blank silence.

" Yes ? " said the Doctor, with evident constraint. " Bring your
chair here, and speak on."

He complied as to the chair, but appeared to find the speaking on
less easy.

Charles Darnafs Declaration. 437

" I have had the happiness, Doctor Manette, of being so intimate
here,' ' so he at length began, " for some year and a half, that I hope
the topic on which I am about to touch may not "

He was stayed by the Doctor's putting out his hand to stop him.
"When ho had kept it so a little while, he said, drawing it back :

" Is Lucie the topic ? "

« She is."

" It is hard for me to speak of her at any time. It is very hard for
me to hear her spoken of in that tone of yours,\ Charles Darnay."

" It is a tone of fervent admiration, true homage, and deep love,
Doctor Manette ! " he said deferentially.

There was another blank silence before her father rejoined :

" I believe it. I do you justice ; I believe it."

His constraint was so manifest, and it was so manifest, too, that it
originated in an unwillingnees to approach the subject, that Charles
Darnay hesitated.

« Shall I go on, sir ? "

Another blank.

" Yes, go on."

" You anticipate what I would say, though you cannot know how
earnestly I say it, how earnestly I feel it, without knowing my secret
heart, and the hopes and fears and anxieties with which it has long
been laden. Dear Doctor Manette, I love your daughter fondly,
dearly, disinterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the
world, I love her. You have loved yourself ; let your old love speak
for me ! "

The Doctor sat with his face turned away, and his eyes bent on the
ground. At the last words, he stretched out his hand again, hurriedly,
and cried :

" Not that, sir ! Let that be ! I adjure you, do not recall that ! "

His cry was so like a cry of actual pain, that it rang in Charles
Darnay's ears long after he had ceased. He motioned with the hand
ho had extended, and it seemed to be an appeal to Darnay to pause.
The latter so received it, and remained silent.

" I ask your pardon," said the Doctor, in a subdued tone, after some
moments. " I do not doubt your loving Lucie ; you may be satisfied
of it."

He turned towards him in his chair, but did not look at" him, or
raise his eyes. His chin dropped upon his hand, and his white hair
overshadowed his face :

" Have you spoken to Lucie ? "

" No."

"Nor written?"

" Never."

" It would bo imgenerous to affect not to know that your self-denial
is to be referred to your consideration for her father. Her father
thanks you."

438 A Tale of Two Cities.

He offered his liand ; but his eyes did not go with it.

"I know," said Darnay, respectfally, "how can I fail to know,
Doctor Manette, I who have seen you together from day to day, that
between you and Miss Manette there is an affection so unusual, so
touching, so belonging to the circumstances in which it has been
nurtured, that it can have few parallels, even in the tenderness
between a father and child. I know, Dr. Manette — how can I fail to
know — that, mingled with the affection and duty of a daughter who
has become a woman, there is, in her heart, towards you, all the love
and reliance of infancy itself. I know that, as in her childhood she
Lad no parent, so she is now devoted to you with all the constancy
and fervour of her present years and character, united to the trustful-
ness and attachment of the early days in which you were lost to her.
I know perfectly well that if you had been restored to her from the
world beyond this life, you could hardly be invested, in her sight,
with a more sacred character than that in which you are always with
her. I know that when she is clinging to you, the hands of baby,
girl, and woman, all in one, are round your neck. I know that in
loving you she sees and loves her mother at her own age, sees and
loves you at my age, loves her mother broken-hearted, loves yon
through your dreadful trial and in your blessed restoration. I have
known this, night and day, since I have known you in your home."

Her father sat silent, with his face bent down. His breathing was
a little quickened ; but he repressed all other signs of agitation.

" Dear Doctor Manette, always knowing this, always seeing her and
you with this hallowed light about you, I have forborne, and forborne,
as long as it was in the nature of man to do it. I have felt, and do
even now feel, that to bring my love — even mine — between you, is to
touch your history with something not quite so good as itself. But I
love her. Heaven is my witness that I love her ! "

" I believe it," answered her father, mournfully. " I have thought
BO before now. I believe it."

" But, do not believe," said Darnay, upon whose ear the mournfal
voice struck with a reproachful sound, " that if my fortune were so
cast as that, being one day so happy as to make her my wife, I must
at any time put any separation between her and you, I could or would
breathe a word of what I now say. Besides that I should know it to
be hopeless, I should know it to be a baseness. If I had any such
possibility, even at a remote distance of years, harboured in my
thoughts, and hidden in my heart — if it ever had been there — if it ever
could be there — I could not now touch this honoured hand."

He laid his own upon it as he sjwke.

"No, dear Doctor Manette. Like you, a voluntary exile from
France ; like you, driven from it by its distractions, oppressions, and
miseries ; like you, striving to live away from it by my own exertions,
and trusting in a happier future ; I look only to sharing your fortunes,
Bharing your life and home, and being faithful to you to the death*

Its Reception by the Doctor. 439

Not to divide with Lucio her privilege as your child, companion, and
friend ; but to come in aid of it, and bind her closer to you, if such a
thing can be."

His touch still lingered on her father's hand. Answering the touch
for a moment, but not coldly, her father rested his hands upon the
arms of his chair, and looked up for the first time since the beginning
of the conference. A struggle was evidently in his face ; a struggle
with that occasional look which had a tendency in it to dark doubt
and dread.

" You speak so feelingly and so manfully, Charles Daniay, that I
thank you with all my heart, and will open all my heart — or nearly so.
Have you any reason to believe that Lucie loves you ? "

" None. As yet, none."

" Is it the immediate object of this confidence, that you may at once
ascertain that, with my knowledge ? "

"Not even so. I might not have the hopefulness to do it for
weeks ; I might (mistaken or not mistaken) have that hopefulness
to-morrow."

" Do you seek any guidance from me ? "

" I ask none, sir. But I have thought it possible that you might
have it in your power, if you should deem it right, to give me some."

" Do you seek any promise from me ! "

" I do seek that."

« What is it ? "

" I well understand that, without you, I could have no hope. I
well imderstand that, even if Miss Manette held me at this moment in
her innocent heart — do not think I have the presumption to assume
so much — I could retain no place in it against her love for her
father."

" If that be so, do you see what, on the other hand, is involved
in it ? "

"I understand equally well, that a word from her father in any
suitor's favour, would outweigh herself and all the world. For which
reason. Doctor Manette," said Damay, modestly but firmly, " I would
not ask that word, to save my life."

" I am sure of it. Charles Damay, mysteries arise out of close love,
as well as out of wide division ; in the former case, they are subtle
and delicate, and difficult to penetrate. My daughter Lucie is, in this
one respect, such a mystery to me ; I can make no guess at the state
of her heart."

" May I ask, sir, if you think she is " As he hesitated, her

father supplied the rest.

" Is sought by any other suitor ? "

" It is what I meant to say."

Her father considered a little before he answered :

" You have seen Mr. Carton here, yourself. Mr. Stryver is here
too, occasionally. If it be at all, it can only be by one of those."

440 A Tate of Two Cities.

" Or both," said Darnay.

" I had not thought of both ; I should not think either, likely.
You want a promise from me. Tell me what it is."

" It is, that if Miss Manotte should bring to you at any time, on her
own part, such a confidence as I have ventured to lay before you, you
will bear testimony to what I have said, and to your belief in it. I
hope you may be able to think so well of me, as to urge no influence
against me. I say nothing more of my stake in this ; this is what I
ask. The condition on which I ask it, and which you have an un-
doubted right to require, I will observe immediately."

" I give the promise," said the Doctor, " without any condition. I
believe your object to be, purely and truthfully, as you have stated it.
I believe your intention is to perpetuate, and not to weaken, the ties
between me and my other and far dearer self. If she should ever tell
me that you are essential to her perfect happiness, I will give her to
you. If there were — Charles Darnay, if there were "

The young man had taken his hand gratefully ; their hands were
joined as the Doctor spoke :

" — any fancies, any reasons, any apprehensions, anything whatso-
ever, new or old, against the man she really loved — the direct
responsibility thereof, not lying on his head — they should all be
obliterated for her sake. She is everything to me ; more to me than

suffering, more to me than wrong, more to me Well ! This is

idle talk."

So strange was the way in which he faded into silence, and so
strange his fixed look when he had ceased to speak, that Darnay
felt his own hand turn cold in the hand that slowly released and
dropped it.

" You said something to me," said Doctor Manette, breaking into a
smile. " What was it you said to me ? "

He was at a loss how to answer, until he remembered having
spoken of a condition. Relieved as his mind reverted to that, he
answered :

" Your confidence in me ought to be returned with full confidence
on my part. My present name, though but slightly changed from my
mother's, is not, as you will remember, my own. I wish to tell you
what that is, and why I am in England."'

" Stop ! " said the Doctor of Beauvais.

" I wish it, that I may the better deserve your confidence, and have
no secret from you."

" Stop ! "

For an instant, the Doctor even had his two hands at his ears ; for
another instant, even had his two hands laid on Darnay's lips.

" Tell me when I ask you, not now. If your suit should prosper,
if Lucie should love you, you shall tell me on your marriage morning.
Do you promise ? "

" Willingly."

Lucie^s Dismay. 441

" Grive me your hand. She will be home directly, and it is tetter
she should not see us together to-night. Go ! God bless you ! "

It was dark when Charles Darnay left him, and it was an hour later
and darker when Lucie came home ; she hurried into the room alone
— for Miss Press had gone straight up-stairs — and was surprised to
find his reading-chair empty.

" My father ! " she called to him. " Father dear ! "

Nothing was said in answer, but she heard a low hammering sound
in his bedroom. Passing lightly across the intermediate room, she
looked in at his door and came running back frightened, crying to
herself, with her blood all chilled, " What shall I do ! What shall
I do!"

Her uncertainty lasted but a moment ; she hurried back, and
tapped at his door, and softly called to him. The noise ceased at the
sound of her voice, and he presently came out to her, and they walked
up and down together for a long time.

She came down from her bed, to look at him in his sleep that night.
Ho slept heavily, and his tray of shoe-making tools, and his old
unfinished work, were all as usual.

CHAPTER XL

A COMPANION PICTURE.

" Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, on that self-same night, or morning, to
his jackal ; " mix another bowl of punch ; I have something to say to
you."

Sydney had been working double tides that night, and the night
before, and the night before that, and a good many nights in succession,
making a grand clearance among Mr. Stryver's papers before the
setting in of the Long Vacation. The clearance was effected at last ;
the Stryver arrears were handsomely fetched up ; everything was got
rid of until November should come with its fogs atmospheiic and
fogs legal, and bring grist to the mill again.

Sydney was none the livelier and none the soberer for so much
application. It had taken a deal of extra wet-towelling to pull him
through the night ; a correspondingly extra quantity of wine had pre-
ceded the towelling ; and he was in a very damaged condition, as he
now pulled his turban off and threw it into the basin in which he had
steeped it at intervals for the last six hours.

"Are you mixing that other bowl of punch?" said Stryver the
portly, with his hands in his waistband, glancing round from the sofa
where he lay on his back.

"lam."

442 A Tale of Two Cities.

" Now, look liere ! I am going to tell you something that will
rather surprise you, and that perhaps will make you think me not
quite as shi-ewd as you usually do think me. I intend to marry."

« Bo you ? "

" Yes. And not for money. What do you say now ? "

" I don't feel disposed to say much. Who is she ? "

« Guess."

" Do I Icnow her ? "

" Guess."

" I am not going to guess, at five o'clock in the morning, with my
brains frying and sputtering in my head. If you want me to guess,
you must ask me to dinner."

" Well then, I'll tell you," said Stryver, coming slowly into a sitting
posture. " Sydney, I rather despair of making myself intelligible to
you, because you are such an insensible dog."

" And you," returned Sydney, busy concocting the punch, " are such
a sensitive and poetical spirit."

" Come ! " rejoined Stryver, laughing boastfully, " though I don't
prefer any claim to being the soul of Romance (for I hope I know
better), still I am a tenderer sort of fellow than yonV

" You are a luckier, if you mean that."

" I don't mean that. I mean I am a man of more more "

" Say gallantry, while you are about it," suggested Carton.

" Well ! I'll say gallantry. My meaning is that I am a man," said
Stryver, inflating himself at his friend as he made the punch, " who
cares more to be agreeable, who takes more pains to be agreeable,
who knows better how to be agreeable, in a woman's society, than
you do."

" Go on," said Sydney Carton.

" No ; but before I go on," said Stryver, shaking his head in his
bullying way, " I'll have this out with you. You've been at Dr.
Manette's house as much as I have, or more than I have. Why, I
have been ashamed of your moroseness there ! Your manners have
been of that silent and sullen and hang-dog kind, that, upon my life
and soul, I have been ashamed of you, Sydney ! "

" It should be very beneficial to a man in your practice at the bar,
to be ashamed of anything," returned Sydney ; " you ought to be
much obliged to me."

" You shall not get off in that way," rejoined Stryver, shouldering
the rejoinder at him ; " no, Sydney, it's my duty to tell you — and I
tell you to your face to do you good — that you are a de-vilish ill-
conditioned fellow in that sort of society. You are a disagreeable
fellow."

Sydney di*ank a bumper of the punch he had made, and laughed.

" Look at me 1 " said Stryver, squaring himself ; " I have less need
to make myself agreeable than you have, being more independent in
circumstances. Why do I do it ? "

Mr Striver intends to marry. 443

" I never saw you do it yet," muttered Carton.

" I do it because it's politic ; I do it on principle. And look at
me ! I get on."

" You don't get on with your account of your matrimonial inten-
tions," answered Carton, with a careless air ; " I wish you would
keep to that. As to me — will you never understand that I am
incorrigible ? "

He asked the question with some appearance of scorn.

" You have no business to be incorrigible," was his friend's answer,
delivered in no very soothing tone.

"I have no business to be, at all, that I know of," said Sydney
Carton. " Who is the lady ? "

" Now, don't let my announcement of the name make you uncom-
fortable, Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, preparing him with ostentatious
fiiendliness for the disclosure he was about to make, " because I know
you don't mean half you say ; and if you meant it all, it would be of
no importance. I make this little preface, because you once mentioned
the young lady to me in slighting terms."

" I did ? "

" Certainly ; and in these chambei's."

Sydney Carton looked at his punch and looked at his complacent
friend ; drank his punch and looked at his complacent friend.

"You made mention of the young lady as a golden-hatred doll.
The young, lady is Miss Manette. If you had been a fellow of any
sensitiveness or delicacy of feeling in that kind of way, Sydney, I
might have been a little resentful of your employing such a designa-
tion ; but you are not. You want that sense altogether ; therefore I
am no more annoyed when I think of the expression, than I should be
annoyed by a man's opinion of a picture of mine, who had no eye for
pictures : or of a piece of music of mine, who had no ear for music."

Sydney Carton drank the punch at a great rate; drank it by
bumpers, looking at his friend.

" Now you know all about it, Syd," said Mr. Styver. " I don't care
about fortune : she is a charming creature, and I have made up my
mind to please myself: on the whole, I think I can afford to please
myself. She will have in me a man ali-eady pretty well off, and a
rapidly rising man, and a man of some distinction : it is a piece of
good fortune for her, but she is worthy of good fortune. Are you
astonished ? "

Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, " Why should I be
astonished ? "

" You approve ? "

Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, "Why should I not
approve ? "

" Well ! " said his friend Stryver, " you take it more easily than I
fancied you would, and are less mercenary on my behalf than I
thought you would be ; though, to be sure, you know well enough by

444 -^ '^^^^ ^f ^^^^ Cities.

this time that your ancient chum is a man of a pretty strong will.
Yes, Sydney, I have had enough of this style of life, with no other as
a change from it ; I feel that it is a pleasant thing for a man to have
a home when he feels inclined to go to it (when he doesn't, he can
stay away), and I feel that Miss Manette will tell well in any station,
and will always do me credit. So I have made up my mind. And
now, Sydney, old boy, I want to say a word to ym, about your prospects.
You are in a bad way, you know ; you really are in a bad way. You
don't know the value of money, yon live hard, you'll knock up one of
these days, and be ill and poor ; you really ought to think about a
nurse."

The prosperous patronage with which he said it, made him look
twice as big as he was, and four times as offensive.

" Now, let me recommend you," pursued Stryver, " to look it in the
face. I have looked it in the face, in my different way ; look it in
the face, you, in your different way. Marry. Provide somebody to
take care of you. Never mind your having no enjoyment of women's
society, nor understanding of it, nor tact for it. Find out somebody.
Find out some respectable woman with a little property — somebody
in the landlady way, or lodging-letting way — and many her, against
a rainy day. That's the Mnd of thing for you. Now think of it,
Sydney."
- " I'll think of it," said Sydney.

CHAPTER XII.

THE FELLOW OP DELICACY.

Mr. Stryver having made up his mind to that magnanimous bestowal
of good fortune on the Doctor's daughter, resolved to make her happi-
ness known to her before he left town for the Long Vacation. After
some mental debating of the point, he came to the conclusion that it
would be as well to get all the preliminaries done with, and they
could then arrange at their leisure whether he should give her his
hand a week or two before Michaelmas Term, or in the little Christmas
vacation between it and Hilary.

As to the strength of his case, he had not a doubt about it, but
clearly saw his way to the verdict. Argued with the jury on sub-
stantial worldly grounds — the only grounds ever worth taking into
account — it was a plain case, and had not a weak spot in it. He
called himself for the plaintiff, there was no getting over his evidence,
the counsel for the defendant threw up his brief, and the jury did not
even turn to consider. After trying it, Stryver, C. J., was satisfied
that no plainer case could be.

Mr. Stryver looks in at TeUson's. 445

Accordingly, Mr Stryver inaugnrated the Long Vacation with a
formal proposal to take Miss Manette to Vauxhall Gardens ; that
failing, to Ranelagh ; that unaccountably failing too, it behoved him
to present himself in Soho, and there declare his noble mind.

Towards Soho, therefore, Mr. Stryver shouldered his way from the
Temple, while the bloom of the Long Vacation's infancy was still
upon it. Anybody who had seen him projecting himself into Soho
while he was yet on Saint Dunstan's side of Temple Bar, bursting in
his fnll-blown way along the pavement, to the jostlement of all weaker
people, might have seen how safe and strong he was.

His way taking him past Tellson's, and he both banking at Tellson's
and knowing Mr. Lorry as the intimate friend of the Manettes, it
entered Mr. Stryver's mind to enter the bank, and reveal to Mr.
Lorry the brightness of the Soho horizon. So, he pushed open the
door with the weak rattle in its throat, stumbled down the two
steps, got past the two ancient cashiers, and shouldered himself into
the musty back closet where Mr. Lorry sat at great books ruled
for figures, with perpendicular iron bars to his window as if that
were ruled for figures too, and everything under the clouds were a
Bum.

" Halloa ! " said Mr. Stryver. " How do you do ? I hope you arc
well ! "

It was Stryver's grand peculiarity that he always seemed too big
for any place, or space. He was so much too big for Tellson's, that
old clerks in distant corners looked up with looks of remonstrance,
as though he squeezed them against the wall. The House itself,
magnificently reading the paper quite in the far-off perspective,
lowered displeased, as if the Stryver head had been butted into its
responsible waistcoat.

The discreet Mr. Lorry said, in a sample tone of the voice he would
recommend under the circumstances, " How do you do, Mr. Stryver ?
How do you do, sir ? " and shook hands. There was a peculiarity in
his manner of shaking hands, always to be seen in any clerk at
Tellson's who shook hands with a customer when the House pervaded
the air. He shook in a self-abnegating way, as one who shook for
Tellson and Co.

" Can I do anything for you, Mr. Stryver ? " asked Mr. Lorry, in
his business character.

" Why, no, thank you ; this is a private visit to yourself, Mr.
Lorry ; I have come for a private word."

" Oh indeed ! " said Mr. Lorry, bending down his ear, while his eye
strayed to the House afar off.

" I am going," said Mr. Stryver, leaning his arms confidentially on
the desk : whereupon, although it was a large double one, there
appeared to be not half desk enough for him : " I am going to make
an offer of myself in marriage to your agreeable little friend. Miss
Manette, Mr. Lorry."

446 A Tale of Two Cities.

" Oh dear me ! " cried Mr. Lorry, rubbing his chin, and looking at
his visitor dubiously.

" Oh dear me, sir ? " rejieated Stryver, drawing back. " Oh dear
you, sir ? What may your meaning be, Mr. Lorry ? "

*' My meaning," answered the man of business, " is, of course,
friendly and appreciative, and that it does you the greatest credit,
and — in short, my meaning is everything you could desire. But —

really, you know, Mr. Stryver " Mr. Lorry paused, and shook

his head at him in the oddest manner, as if he were compelled against
his will to add, internally, " you know there really is so much too
much of you ! "

" Well ! " said Stryver, slapping the desk with his contentious hand,
opening his eyes wider, and taking a long breath, " if I understand
you, Mr. Lorry, I'll be hanged ! "

Mr. Lorry adjusted his little wig at both ears as a means towards
that end, and bit the feather of a pen.

" D — u it all, sir ! " said Stryver, staring at him, " am I not
eligible ? "

" Oh dear yes ! Yes. Oh yes, you're eligible ! " said Mr. Lorry.
" If you say eligible, you arc eligible."

" Am I not prosperous ? " asked Stryver.

"Oh! if you come to prosperous, you are prosperous," said Mr.
Lorry.

" And advancing ? "

" If you come to advancing, you know," said Mr. Lorry, delighted
to be able to make another admission, " nobody can doubt that."

" Then what on earth is your meaning, Mr. Lorry ? " demanded
Stryver, perceptibly crestfallen.

" Well ! I Were you going there now ? " asked Mr. Lorry.

" Straight ! " said Stryver, with a plump of his fist on the desk.

" Then I think I wouldn't, if I was you."

" Why ? " said Stryver. " Now, I'll put you in a corner," foren-
sically shaking a forefinger at him. " You are a man of business and
bound to have a reason. State your reason. Why wouldn't you go ? "

"Because," said Mr. Lorry, "I wouldn't go on such an object
without having some cause to believe that I should succeed."

"D— n ME ! " cried Stryver, " but this beats everything."

Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and glanced at the angry
Stryver.

" Here's a man of business — a man of years — a man of experience
■ — in a Bank," said Stryver ; " and having summed up three leading
reasons for complete success, he says there's no reason at all ! Says
it with his head on ! " Mr. Stryver remarked upon the peculiarity
as if it would have been infinitely less remarkable if he had said it
with his head off.

" When I speak of success, I speak of success with the young lady ;
and when I speak of causes and reasons to make success probable, I

I

I

I

Mr. Stryver checked. 447

speak of causes and reasons that will tell as sucli with tlio young
lady. The young lady, my good sir," said Mr. Lorry, mildly tapi)ing
the Stryver arm, " the young lady. The young lady goes before all."

" Then you mean to tell me, Mr. Lorry," said Stryvei', squaring his
elbows, " that it is your deliberate opinion that the young lady at
present in question is a mincing Fool ? "

" Not exactly so. I mean to tell you, Mr. Stryver," said Mr. Lorry,
reddening, " that I will hear no disrespectful word of that young lady
from any lips ; and that if I knew any man — which I hope I do not—
whose taste was so coarse, and whose temper was so overbearing, that
he could not restrain himself from speaking disrespectfully of that
young lady at this desk, not even Tellson's should prevent my giving
him a piece of my mind."

The necessity of being angry in a suppressed tone had put Mr.
Stryver's blood-vessels into a dangerous state when it was his turn to
bo angry ; Mr. Lorry's veins, methodical as theii* courses could usually
be, wore in no better state now it was his turn.

" That is what I mean to tell you, sir," said Mr. Lorry. " Pray let
there be no mistake alx)ut it."

Mr. Stryver sucked the end of a ruler for a little while, and then
stood hitting a tune out of his teeth with it, which probably gave him
the toothache. He broke the awkward silence by saying :

" This is something new to me, Mr. Lorry. You deliberately advise
me not to go up to Soho and offer myself — ?nyself, Stryver of the
King's Bench bar ? "

" Do you ask me for my advice, Mr. Stryver ? "

" Yes, I do."

" Very good. Then I give it, and you have repeated it correctly."

" And all I can say of it is," laughed Stryver with a vexed laugh,
" that this — ha, ha ! — beats everything past, present, and to come."

" Now understand me," pursued Mr. Lorry. " As a man of busi-
ness, I am not justified in saying anything about this matter, for, as a
man of business, I know nothing of it. But, as an old fellow, who
has carried Miss Manette in his arms, who is the trusted friend of
Miss Manette and of her father too, and who has a great affection for
both, I have spoken. The confidence is not of my seeking, recollect.
Now, you think I may not be right ? "

" Not I ! " said Stryver, whistling. " I can't undertake to find third
parties in common sense ; I can only find it myself. I suppose sense
in certain quarters ; you suppose mincing bread-and-butter nonsense.
It's now to me, but you are right, I dare say."

" What I suppose, Mr. Stryver, I claim to characterise for myself.
And understand me, sir," said Mr. Lorry, quickly flushing again, " I
will not — not even at Tellson's — have it characterised for me by any
gentleman breathing."

" There ! I beg your pardon ! " said Stryver.

" Grajjted. Thank you. Well, Mr. Stryver, I was about to say :

448 A Tale of Two Cities.

— it might be painful to you to find yourself mistaken, it might be
painful to Doctor Manette to have the task of being explicit with you,
it might be very painful to Miss Manette to have the task of being
explicit with you. You know the terms upon which I have the honour
and happiness to stand with the family. If yoxx please, committing
you in no way, representing you in no way, I will undertake to
correct my advice by the exercise of a little new observation and
judgment expressly brought to bear upon it. If you shonld then be
dissatisfied with it, you can but test its soundness for yourself ; if, on
the other hand, you should be satisfied with it, and it should be what
it now is, it may spare all sides what is best spared. What do you
Bay?"

" How long would you keep me in town ? "

" Oh ! It is only a question of a few hours. I could go to Soho
in the evening, and come to your chambers afterwards."

" Then I say yes," said Stryver ; " I won't go up there now, I am
not so hot upon it as that comes to ; I say yes, and I shall expect you
to look in to-night. Good-morning."

Then Mr. Stryver turned and burst out of the Bank, causing such
a concussion of air on his passage through, that to stand up against
it bowing behind the two counters, required the utmost remaining
strength of the two ancient clerks. Those venerable and feeble
persons were always seen by the public in the act of bowing, and were
popularly believed, when they had bowed a customer out, still to keep
on bowing in the empty oifice until they bowed another customer in.

The barrister was keen enough to divine that the banker would not
have gone so far in his expression of oj)inion on any less solid ground
than moral certainty. Unprepared as he was for the large pill he had
to swallow, he got it down. " And now," said Mr. Stryver, shaking
his forensic forefinger at the Temple in general, when it was down,
" my way out of this, is, to put you all in the wrong."

It was a bit of the art of an Old Bailey tactician, in which he found
great relief. " You shall not put me in the wrong, young lady," said
Mr. Stryver ; « I'll do that for you."

Accordingly, when Mr. Lorry called that night as late as ten
o'clock, Mr. Stryver, among a quantity of books and papers littered
out for the purpose, seemed to have nothing less on his mind than
the subject of the morning. He even showed surprise when he saw
Mr. Lorry, and was altogether in an absent and preoccupied state.

" Well ! " said that good-natured emissary, after a full half-hour of
bootless attempts to bring him round to the question. *' I have been
to Soho."

" To Soho ? " repeated Mr, Stryver, coldly. " Oh, to be sure !
What am I thinking of! "

" And I have no doubt," said Mr. Lorry, " that I was right in the
conversation we had. My opinion is CQAfirmed, and I reiterate my
advice."

Mr. Lorry taken aback. 449

" I assure you," returned Mr. Stryver, in the friendliest way, " that
I am sorry for it on your account, and sorry for it on the poor father's
account. I know this must always be a sore subject with the family ;
let us say no more about it."

" I don't understand you," said Mr. Lorry.

" I dare say not," rejoined Stiyver, nodding his head in a smoothing
and final way ; " no matter, no matter."

" But it does matter," Mr. Lorry urged.

" No, it doesn't ; I assure you it doesn't. Having supposed that
there was sense where there is no sense, and a laudable ambition
where there is not a laudable ambition, I am well out of my mistake,
and no harm is done. Young women have committed similar follies
often before, and have repented them in poverty and obscurity often
before. In an unselfish aspect, I am sorry that the thing is dropped,
because it would have been a bad thing for mo in a worldly point of
view; in a selfish aspect, I am glad that the thing has dropped,
because it would have been a bad thing for me in a worldly point of
view — it is hardly necessary to say I could have gained nothing by
it. There is no harm at all done. I have not proposed to the young
lady, and, between ourselves, I am by no means certain, on reflection,
that I ever should have committed myself to that extent. Mr. Lorry,
you cannot control the mincing vanities and giddinesses of empty-
headed girls ; you must not expect to do it, or you will always be
disappointed. Now, pray say no more about it. I tell you, I regret
it on account of others, but I am satisfied on my own account. And
I am really very much obliged to you for allowing me to sound you,
and for giving me your advice ; you know the young lady better than
I do ; you were right, it never would have done."

Mr. Lorry was so taken aback, that he looked quite stupidly at Mi
Stryver shouldering him towards the door, with an appearance ot
showering generosity, forbearance, and good-will, on his erring head.
*' Make the best of it, my dear sir," said Stryver ; " say no more about
it ; thank you again for allowing me to sound you ; good-night ! "

Mr. Lorry was out in the night, before he knew where he was.
Mr. Stryver was lying back on his sofa, winking at his ceiling.

CHAPTEE XIIL

THE FELLOW OF NO DELICACT.

If Sydney Carton ever shone anywhere, he certainly never shone in
the house of Doctor Manette. He had been there often, during a
whole year, and had always been the same moody and morose lounger
there. When he cared to talk, he talked well; but, the cloud of

450 A Tale of Two Cities.

caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with snch a fatal darkuesG,
was very rarely pierced by the light within him.

And yet he did care something for the streets that environed that
house, and for the senseless stones that made their pavements. Many
a night he vaguely and unhappily wandered there, when wine had
brought no transitory gladness to him; many a dreary daybreak
revealed his solitary figure lingering there, and still lingering there
when the first beams of the sun brought into strong relief, removed
beauties of architecture in spires of churches and lofty buildings, as
perhaps the quiet time brought some sense of better things, else
forgotten and unattainable, into his mind. Of late, the neglected bed
in the Temple Court had known him more scantily than ever ; and
often when he had thrown himself upon it no longer than a few
minutes, he had got up again, and haunted that neighbourhood.

On a day in August, when Mr. Stryver (after notifying to his
jackal that " ho had thought better of that marrying matter ") had
carried his delicacy into Devonshire, and when the sight and scent of
flowers in the City streets had some waifs of goodness in them for
the worst, of health for the sickliest, and of youth for the oldest,
Sydney's feet still trod those stones. From being irresolute and
purposeless, his feet became animated by an intention, and, in the
working but of that intention, they took him to the Doctor's door.

He was shown up-stairs, and found Lucie at her work, alone. She
had never been quite at her ease with him, and received him with
some little embarrassment as he seated himself near her table. But,
looking up at his face in the interchange of the first few common-
places, she observed a change in it.

" I fear you are not well, Mr. Carton ! "

" No. But the life I lead. Miss Manctte, is not conducive to health.
What is to be expected of, or by, such profligates ? "

" Is it not — forgive me ; I have begun the question on my lips — a
pity to live no better life ? "

" God knows it is a shame ! "

" Then why not change it ? "

Looking gently at him again, she was surprised and saddened to
see that there were tears in his eyes. There were tears in his voice
too, as he answered :

"It is too late for that. I shall never be better than I am. I
shall sink lower, and be worse."

He leaned an elbow on her table, and covered his eyes with his
hand. The table trembled in the silence that followed.

She had never seen him softened, and was much distressed. He
knew her to be so, without looking at her, and said :

" Pray forgivo me. Miss Manette. I break down before the know-
ledge of what I want to say to you. Will you hear me ? "

"If it will do you any good, Mr. Carton, if it would make you
happier, it woiUd makg me very glad ! "

Sydney Carton's Confidence to Lucie. 451

** God bless you for your sweet compassion I "

He unshaded bis face after a little while, and spoke steadily.

" Don't be afraid to hear me. Don't shrink from anything I say.
I am like one who died young. All my life might have been."

"No, Mr. Carton. I am sure that the best part of it might
still be ; I am sure that you might be much, much worthier oi
yourself."

" Say of you. Miss Manette, and although I know better — although
in the mystery of my own wretched heart I know better — I shall
never forget it 1 "

She was pale and trembling. He came to her relief with a fixed
despair of himself which made the interview unlike any other that
could have been holden.

"K it had been possible, Miss Manette, that you could have
returned the love of the man you see before you — self-flung away,
wasted, drunken, poor creature of misuse as you know him to be — ho
would have been conscious this day and this hour, in spite of his
happiness, that he would bring you to misery, bring you to sorrow
and repentance, blight you, disgrace you, pull you down with him.
I know very well that you can have no tenderness for me ; I ask for
none ; I am even thankful that it cannot be."

" Without it, can I not save you, Mr. Carton ? Can I not recall
you — forgive me again ! — to a better course ? Can I in no way repay
your confidence ? I know this is a confidence," she modestly said,
after a little hesitation, and in earnest tears, " I know you would say
this to no one else. Can I turn it to no good account for yourself,
Mr. Carton ? "

He shook his head.

"To none. No, Miss Manette, to none. If you will hear me
through a very little more, all you can ever do for me is done. 1
wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul. In
my degradation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you
with your father, and of this home made such a home by you, has
stirred old shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew
you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never
reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling
me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed
ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and
sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a
dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay
down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it."

" Will nothing of it remain ? O Mr. Carton, think again ! Try
again ! "

" No, Miss Manette ; all through it, I have known myself to be
quite undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still
the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery
you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire — a fire, however,

452 A Tale of Two Cities.

insei)arablc in its nature from myself, quickening notbing, lighting
nothing, doing no service, idly burning away."

" Since it is my misfortune, Mr. Carton, to have made you more un-
happy than you were before you knew me "

" Don't say that, Miss Manette, for you would have reclaimed me,
if anything could. You will not be the cause of my becoming
worse."

" Since the state of your mind that you describe, is, at all events,
attributable to some influence of mine — this is what I mean, if I can
make it plain — can I use no influence to serve you? Have I no
power for good, with you, at all ? "

" The utmost good that I am capable of now. Miss Manette, I have
come here to realise. Let me carry through the rest of my misdirected
life, the remembrance that I opened my heart to you, last of all the
world ; and that there was something left in me at this time Avhich
you could deplore and pity."

" Which I entreated you to believe, again and again, most fervently,
with all my heart, was capable of better things, Mr. Carton ! "

" Entreat me to believe it no more. Miss Manette. I have proved
myself, and I know better. I distress you ; I draw fast to an end.
Will you let me believe, when I recall this day, that the last con-
fidence of my life was reposed in your pure and innocent breast, and
that it lies there alone, and will be shared by no one ? "

" If that will be a consolation to you, yes."

" Not even by the dearest one ever to be known to you ? "

" Mr. Carton," she answered, after an agitated pause, " the secret
is yours, not mine ; and I promise to respect it."

" Thank you. And again, God bless you."

He put her hand to his lips, and moved towards the door.

" Be under no apprehension, Miss Manette, of my ever resuming
this conversation by so much as a passing word. I will never refer to
it again. If I were dead, that could not be surer than it is hence-
forth. In the hour of my death, I shall hold sacred the one good
remembrance — and shall thank and bless you for it — that my last
avowal of myself was made to you, and that my name, and faults, and
miseries were gently carried in your heart. May it otherwise be light
and happy ! "

He was so unlike what he had ever shown himself to be, and it was so
sad to think how much he had thrown away, and how much he every
day kept down and perverted, that Lucie Manette wept mournfully for
him as he stood looking back at her.

" Be comforted ! " he said, " I am not worth such feeling. Miss
Manette. An hour or two hence, and the low companions and low
habits that I scorn but yield to, will render me less worth such tears
as those, than any wretch who creeps along the streets. Be comforted !
But, within myself, I shall always be, towards you, what I am now,
though outwardly I shall be what you have heretofore seen me. The

Cruncher and Son. 453

last supplication but one I make to you, is, that you will believe this
of me."

« I will, Mr. Carton."

" My last supplication of all, is this ; and with it, I will relieve you
of a visitor with whom I well know you have nothing in unison, and
beween whom and you there is an impassable space. It is useless
to say it, I know, but it rises out of my soul. For you, and for any
dear to you, I would do anything. If my career were of that better
kind that there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I
would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. Try to
hold me in your mind, at some quiet times, as ardent and sincere in
this one thing. The time will come, the time will not be long in
coming, when new ties will be formed about you — ties that will bind
you yet more tenderly and strongly to the homo you so adorn — the
dearest ties that will ever grace and gladden you. O Miss Manette,
when the little picture of a bappy father's face looks up in yours,
when yon see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet,
think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to
keep a life you love beside you ! "

Ho said, " Farewell ! " said a last " God bless you ! " and left her.

CHAPTEE XIV.

THE HONEST TRADESMAN.

To the eyes of Mr. Jeremiah Cmncher, sitting on bis stool in Fleet
Street with his grisly urchin beside him, a vast number and variety
of objects in movement were every day presented. Who could sit
upon anything in Fleet Street during the busy hours of the day, and
not be dazed and deafened by two immense processions, one ever
tending westward with the sun, the other ever tending eastward from
the sun, both ever tending to the plains beyond the range of red and
purple where the sun goes down !

With his straw in his mouth, Mr. Cruncher sat watching the two
streams, like the heathen rustic who has for several centuries been on
duty watching one stream — saving that Jerry had no expectation 01
their ever running dry. Nor would it have been an expectation of a
hopeful kind, since a small part of his income was derived from the
pilotage of timid women (mostly of a full habit and past the middle
term of life) from Tellson's side of the tides to the opposite shore.
Brief as such companionship was in every separate instance, Mr.
Cruncher never failed to become so interested in the lady as to express
a strong desire to have the honour of drinking her very good health.
And it was from the gifts bestowed upon him towards the execution

454 -^ ^^'^^ ^ ^'^^'^ Cities.

of this benevolent purpose, that he recruited his finances, as just now
observed.

Time was, when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place, and
mused in the sight of men. Mr. Cruncher, sitting on a stool in a
public place, but not being a poet, mused as little as possible, and
looked about him.

It fell out that he was thus engaged in a season when crowds were
few, and belated women few, and when his affairs in general were so
unprosperous as to awaken a strong suspicion in his breast that Mrs.
Cruncher must have been *' flopping " in some pointed manner, when
an unusual concourse pouring down Fleet Street westward, attracted
his attention. Looking that way, Mr. Cruncher made out that some
kind of funeral was coming along, and that there was popular objection
to this funeral, which engendered uproar.

" Young Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, tm'ning to his offspring, " it's a
buryin'."

" Hooroar, father ! " cried Young Jerry.

The young gentleman uttered this exultant sound with mysterious
significance. The elder gentleman took the cry so ill, that he watched
his opportunity, and smote the young gentleman on the ear.

" What d'ye mean ? What are you hooroaring at ? What do you
want to conwey to your own father, you young Rip ? This boy is a
getting too many for me! " said Mr. Cruncher, surveying him. " Him
and his hooroars ! Don't let me hear no more of you, or you shall
feel some more of me. D'ye hear ? "

"I warn't doing no harm," Young Jerry protested, rubbing his
cheek.

" Drop it then," said Mr. Cruncher ; " I won't have none of your no
harms. Get atop of that there seat, and look at the crowd."

His son obeyed, and the crowd approached ; they were bawling and
hissing round a dingy hearse and dingy mourning coach, in which
mourning coach there was only one mourner, dressed in the dingy
trappings that were considered essential to the dignity of the position.
The position appeared by no means to please him, however, with an
increasing rabble surrounding the coach, deriding him, making grimaces
at him, and incessantly groaning and calling out : " Yah ! Spies ! Tst !
Yaha ! Spies ! " with many compliments too numerous and forcible to
repeat.

Funerals had at all times a remarkable attraction for Mr. Cruncher ;
he always pricked up his senses, and became excited, when a funeral
passed Tellson's. Naturally, therefore, a funeral with this uncommon
attendance excited him greatly, and he asked of the first man who ran
against him :

" What is it, brother ? What's it about ? "

"I don't know," said the man. " Spies ! Yaha ! Tst I Spies ! "

He asked another man. " Who is it ? "

"J don't know," returned the man, clapping his hands to his mouth

^

\

1^

Mr. Cruncher attends a Funeral. 455

ncverthcloss, and vociferating in a surprising lieat and with the greatest
ardour, " Spies ! Yaha ! Tst, tst ! Spi-ies ! "

At length, a person better informed on the merits of the case, tumbled
against him, and from this person he learned that the funeral was the
funeral of one Koger Cly.

" Was He a spy ? " asked Mr. Cnincher.

" Old Bailey spy," returned his informant. " Yaha ! Tst ! Yah !
Old Bailey Spi-i-ies ! "

" Why, to be sure ! " exclaimed Jerry, recalling the Trial at which
he had assisted. " I've seen him. Dead, is he ? "

" Dead as mutton," returned the other, " and can't be too dead.
Have 'em out, there ! Spies ! Pull 'cm out, there ! Spies ! "

The idea was so acceptable in the prevalent absence of any idea,
that the crowd caught it up with eagerness, and loudly repeating the
suggestion to have 'em out, and to pull 'em out, mobbed the tv.'o
vehicles so closely that they came to a stop. On the crowd's opening
the coach doors, the one mourner scuffled out of himself and was in
their hands for a moment ; but he was so alert, and made such good
use of his time, that in another moment he was scouring away up a
by- street, after shedding his cloak, hat, long hatband, white pocket-
handkerchief, and other symbolical tears.

These, the people tore to pieces and scattered far and wide with
great enjoyment, while the tradesmen hurriedly shut up their shops ;
for a crowd in those times stopped at nothing, and was a monster much
dreaded. They had already got the length of opening the hearse to
take the coffin out, when some brighter genius proposed instead, its
being escorted to its destination amidst general rejoicing. Practical
suggestions being much needed, this suggestion, too, was received with
acclamation, and the coach was immediately filled with eight inside
and a dozen out, while as many people got on the roof of the hearse as
could by any exercise of ingenuity stick upon it. Among the first of
these volunteers was Jerry Cruncher himself, who modestly concealed
his spiky head from the observation of Tellson's, in the further corner
of the mourning coach.

The officiating undertakers made some protest against these changes
in the ceremonies ; but, the river being alarmingly near, and several
voices remarking on the efficacy of cold immersion in bringing re-
fractory members of the profession to reason, the protest was faint and
brief. The remodelled procession started, with a chimney -swee p driving
the hearse — advised by the regular driver, who was percLad beside
him, under close inspection, for the purpose — and with a pieman, also
attended by his cabinet minister, driving the mourning coach. A
bear-leader, a popular street character of the time, was impressed as
an additional ornament, before the cavalcade had gone far down the
Strand ; and his bear, who was black and very mangy, gave quite an
Undertaking air to that part of the procession in which he walked.

ThuSj with beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, song-roaring, and infinite

456 A Tale of Two Cities.

caricaturing of woe, the disorderly procession went its way, recruiting
at every step, and all the shops shutting up before it. Its destination
was the old church of Saint Pancras, far off in the fields. It got there
in course of time ; insisted on pouring into the burial-ground ; finally,
accomplished the interment of the deceased Roger Cly in its own way,
and highly to its own satisfaction.

The dead man disposed of, and the crowd being under the necessity
of providing some other entertainment for itself, another brighter
genius (or perhaps the same) conceived the humour of impeaching
casual passers-by, as Old Bailey spies, and wreaking vengeance on
them. Chase was given to some scores of inoffensive persons who had
never been near the Old Bailey in their lives, in the realisation of this
fancy, and they were roughly hustled and maltreated. The transition
to the sport of window-breaking, and thence to the plundering of
public-houses, was easy and natural. At last, after several hours,
when sundry summer-houses had been pulled down, and some area-
railings had been torn up, to arm the more belligerent spirits, a
rumour got about that the Guards were coming. Before this rumour,
the crowd gradually melted away, and perhaps the Guards came, and
perhaps they never came, and this was the usual progress of a mob.

Mr. Cruncher did not assist at the closing sports, but had remained
behind in the churchyard, to confer and condole with the undertakers.
The place had a soothing influence on him. He procured a pipe from
a neighbouring public-house, and smoked it, looking in at the railings
and maturely considering the spot.

"Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, apostrophising himself in his usual
way, " you see that there Cly that day, and you see with your own
eyes that he was a young 'un and a straight made 'un."

Having smoked his pipe out, and ruminated a little longer, he turned
himself about, that he might appear, before the hour of closing, on
his station at Tellson's. Whether his meditations on mortality had
touched his liver, or whether his general health had been previously
at all amiss, or whether he desired to show a little attention to an
eminent man, is not so much to the purpose, as that he made a short
call upon his medical adviser — a distinguished surgeon — on his way
back.

Young Jerry relieved his father with dutiful interest, and reported
No job in his absence. The bank closed, the ancient clerks came
out, the iisual watch was set, and Mr. Cruncher and his son went home
to tea.

" Now, I tell you where it is ! " said Mr. Cruncher to his wife, on
entering. " If, as a honest tradesman, my wenturs goes wrong to-night,
I shall make sure that you've been praying again me, and I shall work
you for it just the same as if I seen you do it."

The dejected Mrs. Cruncher shook her head. •

" Why, you're at it afore my face ! " said Mr. Cruncher, with eigns
of angry approheusiou.

Mr. Cruncher bars Flopping. 457

" I am saying nothing."

" Well, then ; don't meditate nothing. You might as well flop as
meditate. Yon may as well go again me one way as another. Drop
it altogether."

" Yes, Jerry."

" Yes, Jerry," repeated Mr. Cruncher, sitting down to tea. " Ah I
It is yes, Jerry. That's about it. You may say yes, Jerry."

Mr. Cruncher had no particular meaning in these sulky corrobora-
tions, but made use of them, as people not unfrequcntly do, to express
general ironical dissatisfaction.

" You and your yes, Jerry," said Mr. Cmncher, taking a bito out
of his bread-and-butter, and seeming to help it down with a large
invisible oyster out of his saucer. " Ah ! I think so. I believe
you."

"You are going out to-night?" asked his decent wfe, when ho
took another bite.

« Yes, I am."

" May I go with you, father ? " asked his son, briskly.

" No, you mayn't. I'm a going — as your mother knows — a fishing.
That's where I'm going to. Going a fishing."

" Your fishing-rod gets rayther rusty ; don't it, father ? "

" Never you mind."

" Shall you bring any fish home, father ? "

" If I don't, you'll have short commons, to-morrow," returned that
gentleman, shaking his head ; " that's questions enough for you ; I
ain't a going out, till you've been long abed."

He devoted himself during the remainder of the evening to keeping
a most vigilant watch on Mrs. Cruncher, and sullenly holding her in
conversation that she might be prevented from meditating any petitions
to his disadvantage. With this view, he urged his son to hold her in
conversation also, and led the unfortunate woman a hard life by
dwelling on any causes of complaint he could bring against her, rather
than he would leave her for a moment to her own reflections. Tho
devoutest person could have rendered no greater homage to tho
efficacy of an honest prayer than he did in this distrust of his wife.
It was as if a professed unbeliever in ghosts should bo frightened by
a ghost story.

"And mind you!" said Mr. Cruncher. "No games to-morrow!
If I, as a honest tradesman, succeed in providing a jinte of meat or
two, none of your not touching of it, and sticking to bread. If I, as
a honest tradesman, am able to provide a little beer, none of your
declaring on water. When you go to Home, do as Komo does. Eome
will be a ugly customer to you, if you don't. Tm your Rome, you
know."

Then he began grumbling again :

" With your flying into the face of your own wittles and drink ! I
don't know how scarce you mayn't make the wittles and drink heroj

458 A Tale of Two Cities.

by your flopping tricks and your unfeeling conduct. Look at your
boy : he is your'n, ain't ho ? He's as thin as a lath. Do you call
yourself a mother, and not know that a mother's first duty is to blow
her boy out ? "

This touched Young Jerry on a tender place ; who adjured his
mother to perform her first duty, and, whatever else she did or
neglected, above all things to lay especial stress on the discharge of
that maternal function so affectingly and delicately indicated by his
other parent.

Thus the evening wore away with the Cruncher family, until Young
Jerry was ordered to bed, and his mother, laid under similar injunc-
tions, obeyed them. Mr. Cruncher beguiled the earlier watches of
the night with solitary pipes, and did not start upon his excursion
until nearly one o'clock. Towards that small and ghostly hour, he
rose up from his chair, took a key out of his pocket, opened a locked
cupboard, and brought forth a sack, a crowbar of convenient size, a
ropo and chain, and other fishing tackle of that nature. Disposing
these articles about him in skilful manner, he bestowed a parting
defiance on Mrs. Cruncher, extinguished the light, and went out.

Young Jerry, who had only made a feint of undressing when he
went to bed, was not long after his father. Under cover of the dark-
ness he followed out of the room, followed down the stairs, followed
down the court, followed out into the streets. He was in no uneasiness
concerning his getting into the house again, for it was full of lodgers,
and the door stood ajar all night.

Impelled by a laudable ambition to study the art and mystery of
his father's honest calling, Young Jerry, keeping as close to house
fronts, walls, and doorways, as his eyes were close to one another, held
his honoured parent in view. The honoured parent steering North-
ward, had not gone far, when he was joined by another disciple of
Izaak Walton, and the two trudged on together.

Within half an hour from the first starting, they were beyond the
winking lamps, and the more than winking watchmen, and were out
upon a lonely road. Another fisherman was picked up here — and
that so silently, that if Young Jerry had been superstitious, he might
have supposed the second follower of the gentle craft to have, all of a
sudden, split himself into two.

The three went on, and Young Jerry went on, until the three
stopped under a bank overhanging the road. Upon the top of the
bank was a low brick wall, surmounted by an iron railing. In the
shadow of bank and wall the three turned out of the road, and up a
blind lane, of which the wall — there, risen to some eight or ten feet
high — formed one side. Crouching down in a comer, peeping up the
lane, the next object that Young Jerry saw, was the form of his
honoured parent, pretty well defined against a watery and clouded
moon, nimbly scaling an iron gate. He was soon over, and then the
second fisherman got over, and then the third. They all dropped

Mr. Crunchet^s Honest Trade. 459

Boftly on the grotind within the gate, and lay there a little — listening
perhaps. Then, they moved away on their hands and knees.

It was now Young Jerry's tnrn to approach the gate : which he did,
holding his breath. Crouching down again in a comer there, and
looking in, he made out the three fishermen creeping through some
I'ank grass ! and all the gravestones in the chiu'chyard — it was a large
churchyard that they were in — looking on like ghosts in white, while
the church tower itself looked on like the ghost of a monstrous giant.
They did not creep far, before they stopped and stood upright. And
then they began to fish.

Thoy fished with a spade, at first. Presently the honoured parent
appeared to be adjusting some instrument like a great corkscrew.
Whatever tools they worked with, they worked hard, until the awful
striking of the church clock so terrified Young Jerry, that he made
off, with his hair as stiff as his father's.

But, his long-cherished desire to know more about these matters,
not only stopped him in his running away, but lured him back again.
They were still fishing perseveringly, when he peeped in at the gate
for the second time ; but, now they seemed to have got a bite. There
was a screwing and complaining sound down below, and their bent
figures were strained, as if by a weight. By slow degrees the weight
broke away the earth upon it, and came to the surface. Young Jerry
very well knew what it would be ; but, when he saw it, and saw his
honoured parent about to wrench it open, he was so frightened, being
new to the sight, that he made off again, and never stopped until he
had run a mile or more.

He would not have stopped then, for anything less necessary than
breath, it being a spectral sort of race that he ran, and one highly
desirable to get to the end of. He had a strong idea that the cof&n
he had seen was running after him ; and, pictured as hopping on
behind him, bolt upright, upon its narrow end, always on the point of
overtaking him and hopping on at his side — perhaps taking his arm
— it was a pursuer to shun. It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous
fiend too, for, while it was making the whole night behind him
dreadful, ho darted out into the roadway to avoid dark alleys, fearful
of its coming hopping out of them like a dropsical boy's-Kite without
tail and wings. It hid in doorways too, rubbing its horrible shoulders
against doors, and drawing them up to its ears, as if it were laughing.
It got into shadows on the road, and lay cunningly on its back to trip
him up. All this time it was incessantly hopping on behind and
gaining on him, so that when the boy got to his own door ho had
reason for being half dead. And even then it would not leave him,
but followed him up-stairs with a bump on every staii*, scrambled into
bed with him, and bumped down, dead and heavy, on his breast when
ho fell asleep.

From his oppressed slumber. Young Jerry in his closet was
awakened after daybreak and before sunrise, by the presence of his

460 A Tale of Two Cities.

father in the family room. Something had gone wrong with him ; at
least, so Young Jerry inferred, from the circumstance of his holding
Mrs. Cruncher by the ears, and knocking the back of her head against
the head-board of the bed.

" I told you I would," said Mr. Cruncher, " and I did."

" Jerry, Jerry, Jerry ! " his wife implored.

" You oppose yourself to the profit of the business," said Jerry,
" and me and my partners suflfer. You was to honour and obey ; why
the devil don't you ? "

" I try to be a good wife, Jerry," the poor woman protested, with
tears.

" Is it being a good wife to oppose your husband's business ? Is it
honouring your husband to dishonour his business? Is it obeying
your husband to disobey him on the wital subject of his business ? "

" You hadn't taken to the dreadful business then, Jerry."

" It's enough for you," retorted Mr. Cruncher, " to be the wife of a
honest tradesman, and not to occupy your female mind with calcula-
tions when he took to his trade or when he didn't. A honouring and
obeying wife would let his trade alone altogether. Call youreelf a
religious woman ? If you're a religious woman, give me a irreligous
one ! You have no more nat'ral sense of duty than the bed of this
here Thames river has of a pile, and similarly it must be knocked into
you."

The altercation was conducted in a low tone of voice, and termi-
nated in the honest tradesman's kicking off his clay-soiled boots, and
lying down at his length on the floor. After taking a timid peep at
him lying on his back, with his rusty hands under his head for a
pillow, his son lay down too, and fell asleep again.

There was no fish for breakfast, and not much of anything else.
Mr. Cruncher was out of spirits, and out of temper, and kept an iron
pot-lid by him as a projectile for the correction of Mrs. Cruncher, in
case he should observe any symptoms of her saying Grace. He was
brushed and washed at the usual hour, and set off with his son to
pursue his ostensible calling.

Young Jerry, walking with the stool under his arm at his father's
side along sunny and crowded Fleet Street, was a very different Young
Jerry from him of the previous night, running home through darkness
and solitude from his grim pursuer. His cunning was fresh with the
day, and his qualms were gone with the night — in which particulars
it is not improbable that he had compeers in Fleet Street and the City
of London, that fine morning.

" Father," said Young Jerry, as they walked along : taking care to
keep at arm's length and to have the stool well between them : " what's
a Resurrection-Man ? "

Mr. Cruncher came to a stop on the pavement before he answered,
"How should I know?"

" I thought you knowed everything, father," said the artless boy.

Young Jerry's Aspiration, 461

" Hem ! Well," returned Mr. Cruncher, going on again, and lift-
ing off his hat to give his spikes free play, " he's a tradesman."

" What's his goods, father ? " asked the brisk Young Jerry.

" His goods," said Mr. Cruncher, after turning it over in his mind,
*' is a branch of Scientific goods."

" Persons' bodies, ain't it, father ? " asked the lively boy.

" I believe it is something of that sort," said Mr. Cruncher.

" Oh, father, I should so like to be a Eesurrection-Man when I'm
quite growed up ! "

Mr. Cruncher was soothed, but shook his head in a dubious and
moral way. " It depends upon how you dewelop your talents. Be
careful to dewelop your talents, and never to say no more than you
can help to nobody, and there's no telling at the present time what you
may not come to be fit for." As Young Jerry, thus encouraged, went
on a few yards in advance, to plant the stool in the shadow of the Bar,
Mr. Cruncher added to himself: "Jerry, you honest tradesman,
there's hopes wot that boy will yet be a blessing to you, and a recom-
pense to you for his mother ! "

CHAPTER XV.

KNITTING.

There had been earlier drinking than usual in the wine-shop of
Monsieur Dofarge. As early as six o'clock in the morning, sallow
faces peeping through its barred windows had descried other faces
within, bending over measures of wine. Monsieur Defarge sold a veiy
thin wine at the best of times, but it would seem to have been an
unusually thin wine that he sold at this time. A sour wine, moreover,
or a soui'ing, for its influence on the mood of those who drank it was
to make them gloomy. No vivacious Bacchanalian flame leaped out
of the pressed grape of Monsieur Defarge ; but, a smouldering fire
that burnt in the dark, lay hidden in the dregs of it.

This had been the third morning in succession, on which there had
been early drinking at the wine-shop of Monsieur Defarge. It had
begun on Monday, and here was Wednesday come. There had been
more of early brooding than drinking ; for, many men had listened
and whispered and slunk about there from the time of the opening of
the door, who could not have laid a piece of money on the counter to
save their souls. These were to the full as interested in the place,
however, as if they could have commanded whole barrels of wine ; and
they glided from seat to seat, and from corner to corner, swallowing
talk in lieu of drink, with greedy looks.

Notwithstanding an unusual flow of company, the master of the

462 A Tale of Two Cities.

wine-shop was not visible. He was not missed ; for, nobody who
crossed the threshold looked for him, nobody asked for him, nobody
wondered to see only Madame Defarge in her seat, presiding over the
distribution of wine, with a bowl of battered small coins before her,
as much defaced and beaten out of their original impress as the small
coinage of humanity from whose ragged pockets they had come.

A suspended interest and a prevalent absence of mind, were
perhaps observed by the spies who looked in at the wine-shop, as they
looked in at every place, high and low, from the king's palace to the
criminal's gaol. Games at cards languished, playei-s at dominoes
musingly built towers with them, drinkers drew figures on the tables
with spilt drops of wine, Madame Defarge herself picked out tho
pattern on her sleeve with her toothpick, and saw and heard something
inaudible and invisible a long way off.

Thus, Saint Antoine in this vinous feature of his, until midday.
It was high noontide, when two dusty men passed through his streets
and under his swinging lamps : of whom, one was Monsieur Defarge :
the other a mender of roads in a blue cap. All adust and athirst,
tho two entered the wine-shop. Their arrival had lighted a kind of
fire in tho breast of Saint Antoine, fast spreading as they came along,
which stirred and flickered in flames of faces at most doors and
windows. Yet, no one had followed them, and no man spoke when
they entered the mne-shop, though the eyes of every man there were
turned upon them.

" Good-day, gentlemen ! " said Monsieur Defarge.

It may have been a signal for loosening the general tongue. It
elicited an answering chorus of " Good-day ! "

"It is bad weather, gentlemen," said Defarge, shaking his
head.

Upon which, every man looked at his neighbour, and then all cast
down their eyes and sat silent. Except one man, who got up and
went out.

" My wife," said Defarge aloud, addressing Madame Defarge : " I
have travelled certain leagues with this good mender of roads, called
Jacques. I met him — by accident — a day and a half s journey out of
Paris. He is a good child, this mender of roads, called Jacques.
Give him to drink, my wife ! "

A second man got up and went out, Madame Defarge set wine
before the mender of roads called Jacques, who doflfed his blue cap to
the company, and drank. In the breast of his blouse he carried some
coarse dark bread ; he ate of this between whiles, and sat munching
and drinking near Madame Defarge's counter. A third man got up
and went out.

Defarge refreshed himself with a draught of wine — but, he took
less than was given to the stranger, as being himself a man to whom
it was no rarity — and stood waiting until the countryman had made
his breakfaBt. He looked at no one present, and no one now looked.

.^

^>-

«l

The Mender of Roads, called Jacqties, 463

at him ; not even Madame Defarge, who had taken Up her Imitting,
and was at work.

" Have you finished your repast, friend ? " he asked, in due season.

" Yes, thank you."

" Come, then ! You shall see the apartment that I told you you
could occupy. It will suit you to a marvel."

Out of the wine-shop into the street, out of the street into a court-
yard, out of the court-yai-d up a steep staircase, out of the staircase
into a garret, — formerly the garret where a white-haired man sat on
a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes.

No white-haired man was there now ; but, the three men were there
who had gone out of the wine-shop singly. And between them and
the white-haired man afar off, was the one small link, that they had
once looked in at him through the chinks in the wall.

Defarge closed the door carefally, and spoke in a subdued voice :

" Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques Three ! This is the witness
encountered by appointment, by me, Jacques Four. He will tell you
all. Speak, Jacques Five ! "

The mender of roads, blue cap in hand, wiped his swarthy forehead
with it, and said, " Where shall I commence, monsieur ? "

" Commence," was Monsieur Defarge's not unreasonable reply, " at
the commencement."

" I saw him then, messieurs," began the mender of roads, " a year
ago this running summer, underneath the carriage of the Marquis,
hanging by the chain. Behold the manner of it. I leaving my work
on the road, the sun going to bed, the carriage of the Marquis slowly
ascending the hill, he hanging by the chain — like this."

Again the mender of roads went through the whole performance ;
in which he ought to have been perfect by that time, seeing that it
had been the infallible resource and indispensable entertainment of
his village during a whole year.

Jacques One struck in, and asked if ho had ever seen the man
before ?

"Never," answered the mender of roads, recovering his perpen-
dicular.

Jacques Three demanded how he afterwards recognised him
then?

" By his tall figure," said the mender of roads, softly, and with his
finger at his nose. " When Monsieur the Marquis demands that
evening, ' Say, what is he like ? ' I make response, ' Tall as a
spectre.' "

" You should have said, short as a dwarf," returned Jacques Two.

" But what did I know ? The deed was not then accomplished,
neither did he confide in me. Observe ! Under those circumstances
even, I do not offer my testimony. Monsieur the Marquis indicates
me with his finger, standing near our little fountain, and says, * To
me ! Bring that rascal ! ' My faith, messieurs, I offer nothing."

464 A Tale of Two Cities.

" Ho is right there, Jacques," murmured Defarge, to him who had
interrupted. " Go on ! "

" Good ! " said the mender of roads, with an air of mystery. " The
tall man is lost, and he is sought — how many months ? Nine, ten,
eleven?"

" No matter, the number," said Defar£»e. " He is well hidden, but
at last he is imluckily found. Go on ! "

" I am again at work upon the hill-side, and the sun is again about
to go to bed. I am collecting my tools to descend to my cottage down
in the village below, where it is already dark, when I raise my eyes,
and see coming over the hill six soldiers. In the midst of them is a
tall man with his arms bound — tied to his sides — like this ! "

With the aid of his indispensable cap, he represented a man with his
elbows bound fast at his hips, with cords that were knotted behind him.

" I stand aside, messieurs, by my heap of stones, to see the soldiers
and their prisoner pass (for it is a solitary road, that, where any
spectacle is well worth looking at), and at first, as they approach,
I see no more than that they are six soldiers with a tall man bound,
and that they are almost black to my sight — except on the side of the
sun going to bed, where they have a red edge, messieurs. Also, I see
that their long shadows are on the hollow ridge on the opposite side
of the road, and are on the hill above it, and are like the shadows of
giants. Also, I see that they are covered with dust, and that the
dust moves with them as they come, tramp, tramp ! But when they
advance quite near to me, I recognise the tall man, and he recognises
me. Ah, but he would be well content to precipitate himself over
the hill-side once again, as on the evening when he and I first encoun-
tered, close to the same spot ! "

He described it as if he were there, and it was evident that he saw
it vividly ; perhaps he had not seen much in his life.

" I do not show the soldiers that I recognise the tall man ; he does
not show the soldiers that he recognises me ; we do it, and we know
it, with our eyes. ' Come on ! ' says the chief of that company,
pointing to the village, ' bring him fast to his tomb ! ' and they bring
him faster. I follow. His arms are swelled because of being bound
so tight, his wooden shoes are large and clumsy, and he is lame.
Because he is lame, and consequently slow, they drive him with their
guns — like this ! "

He imitated the action of a man's being impelled forward by the
butt-ends of muskets.

" As they descend the hill like madmen running a race, he falls.
They laugh and pick him up again. His face is bleeding and covered
with dust, but he cannot touch it ; thereupon they laugh again.
They bring him into the village ; all the village runs to look ; they
take him past the mill, and up to the prison ; all the village sees the
prison gate open in the darkness of the night, and swallow him —
like this ! "

The Mender of Roads tells his Tale. 465

He opened his mouth as wide as he could, and shut it with a
BouSding snap of his teeth. Observant of his unwillingness to mar
the effect by opening it again, Defarge said, " Go on, Jacques."

" All the village," pursued the member of roads, on tiptoe and in a
low voice, " withdraws ; all the village whispers by the fountain ; all
the village sleeps ; all the village dreams of that unhappy one, within
the locks and bars of the prison on the crag, and never to come out
of it, except to perish. In the morning, with my tools upon my
shoulder, eating my morsel of black bread as I go, I make a circuit
by the prison, on my way to my work. There I see him, high up,
behind the bars of a lofty iron cage, bloody and dusty as last night,
looking through. He has no hand free, to wave to me ; I dare not
call to him ; he regards mo like a dead man."

Defarge and the three glanced darkly at one another. The lookp
of all of them were dark, repressed, and revengeful, as they listened
to the countryman's story ; the manner of all of them, wliile it was
secret, was authoritative too. They had the air of a rough tribunal ;
Jacques One and Two sitting on the old pallet-bed, each with his chin
resting on his hand, and his eyes intent on the road-mender ; Jacques
Three, equally intent, on one knee behind them, with his agitated
hand always gliding over the network of fine nerves about his mouth
and nose ; Defarge standing between them and the narrator, whom he
had stationed in the light of the window, by turns looking from him
to them, and from them to him.

" Go on, Jacques," said Defarge.

"He remains up there in his iron cage some days. The village
looks at him by stealth, for it is afraid. But it always looks up, from
a distance, at the prison on the crag ; and in the evening, when the
work of the day is achieved and it assembles to gossip at the fountain,
all faces are turned towards the prison. Formerly, they were turned
towards the posting-house ; now, they are turned towards the prison.
They whisper at the fountain, that although condemned to death ho
will not be executed ; they say that petitions have been presented in
Paris, showing that he was enraged and made mad by the death of his
child ; they say that a petition has been presented to the King himself.
What do I Icnow ? It is possible. Perhaps yes, perhaps no."

" Listen then, Jacques," Number One of that name sternly interposed.
" Know that a petition was presented to tho King and Queen. All
here, yourself excepted, saw the King take it, in his carriage in tho
street, sitting beside the Queen. It is Defarge whom you see here,
who, at the hazard of his life, darted out before the horses, with the
petition in his hand."

" And once again listen, Jacques ! " said the kneeling Number
Thi*ee : his fingers ever wandering over and over those fine nerves,
with a strikingly greedy air, as if he hungered for something — that
was neither food nor drink ; " the guard, horse and foot, surrounded
the petitioner, and struck him blows. You hear ? "

2h

466 A Tale of Two Cities.

" I hear, messieurs."

" Go on then," said Defarge.

" Again ; on the other hand, they whisper at the fonntain," resumed
the countryman, " that he is brought down into our country to be
executed on the spot, and that he will very certainly be executed.
They even whisper that because he has slain Monseigneur, and
because Monseigneur was the father of his tenants — serfs — what you
will — he will be executed as a parricide. One old man says at the
fountain, that his right hand, armed with the knife, will be burnt off
before his face ; that, into wounds which will be made in his arms,
his breast, and his legs, there will be poured boiling oil, melted lead,
hot resin, wax, and sulphur ; finally, that he will be torn limb from
limb by four strong horses. That old man says, all this was actually
done to a prisoner who made an attempt on the life of the late King,
Louis Fifteen. But how do I know if he lies ? I am not a scholar."

" Listen once again then, Jacques ! " said the man with the restless
hand and the craving air. " The name of that prisoner was Damiens,
and it was all done in open day, in the open streets of this city of
Paris ; and nothing was more noticed in the vast concourse that saw
it done, than the crowd of ladies of quality and fashion, who were full
of eager attention to the last — to the last, Jacques, prolonged until
nightfall, when he had lost two legs and an arm, and still breathed I
And it was done — why, how old are you ? "

" Thirty-five," said the mender of roads, who looked sixty.

" It was done when yon were more than ten years old ; you might
have seen it."

" Enough ! " said Defarge, with grim impatience. " Long live the
Devil ! Go on."

" Well ! Some whisper this, some whisper that ; they speak of
nothing else ; even the fountain appears to fall to that tune. At
length, on Sunday night when all the village is asleep, come soldiers,
winding down from the prison, and their guns ring on the stones of
the little street. Workmen dig, workmen hammer, soldiers laugh
and sing ; in the morning, by the fountain, there is raised a gallows
forty feet high, poisoning the water."

The mender of roads looked through rather than at the low ceiling,
and pointed as if he saw the gallows somewhere in the sky.

" AH work is stopped, all assemble there, nobody leads the cows
out, the cows are there with the rest. At midday, the roll of drums.
Soldiers have marched into the prison in the night, and he is in the
midst of many soldiers. He is bound as before, and in his mouth
there is a gag — tied so, with a tight string, making him look almost
as if he laughed." He suggested it, by creasing his face with his two
thumbs, from the comers of his mouth to his ears. " On the top of
the gallows is fixed the knife, blade upwards, with its point in the
air. He is hanged there forty feet high — and is left hanging,
poisoning the water."

7'he Mender of Roads continues. 467

They looked at one another, as he used his blue cap to wipe his
face, on which the perspiration had started afresh while he recalled
the spectacle.

" It is frightful, messieurs. How can the women and the children
draw water ! Who can gossip of an evening, under that shadow I
Under it, have I said ? When I left the village, Monday evening as
the sun was going to bed, and looked back from the hill, the shadow
struck across the church, across the mill, across the prison — seemed
to strike across the earth, messieurs, to where the sky rests upon it ! "

The hungry man gnawed one of his fingers as he looked at the
other three, and his finger quivered with the craving that was on
him.

" That's all, messieurs. I left at sunset (as 1 had been warned to
do), and I walked on, that night and half next day, until I met (as I
was warned I should) this comrade. With him, I came on, now riding
and now walking, through the rest of yesterday and through last
night. And here you see me ! "

After a gloomy silence, the first Jacques said, " Good ! You have
acted and recounted faithfully. Will you wait for us a little, outside
the door?"

"Very willingly," said the mender of roads. Whom Defarge
escorted to the top of the stairs, and, leaving seated there, retm-ned.

The three had risen, and their heads were together when he came
back to the garret.

" How say you, Jacques ? " demanded Number One. " To be
registered ? "

" To be registered, as doomed to destniction," returned Defarge.

" Magnificent ! " croaked the man with the craving.

" The chateau and all the race ? " inquired the first.

" The chateau and all the race," returned Defarge. " Extermina-
tion."

The hungry man repeated, in a rapturous croak, " Magnificent I "
and began gnawing another finger.

" Are you sure," asked Jacques Two, of Defarge, " that no embar-
rassment can arise from our manner of keeping the register ? Without
doubt it is safe, for no one beyond ourselves can decipher it ; but
shall we always be able to decipher it — or, I ought to say, will
she?"

" Jacques," returned Defarge, drawing himself up, " if madame my
wife undertook to keep the register in her memory alone, she would
not lose a word of it — not a syllable of it. Knitted, in her own
stitches and her own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as the
sun. Confide in Madame Defarge. It would be easier for the weakest
poltroon that lives, to erase himself from existence, than to erase one
letter of his name or crimes from the knitted register of Madame
Defarge."

There was a murmur of confidence and approval, and then the man

468 A Tale of Tzuo Cities.

who hungered, asked : " Is this rustic to be sent back soon ? I hope
so. He is very simple ; is he not a little dangerous ? "

" He knows nothing," said Defarge ; " at least nothing more than
would easily elevate himself to a gallows of the same height. I
charge myself with him ; let him remain with me ; I will take care of
him, and set him on his road. He wishes to see the fine world — the
King, the Queen, and Court ; let him see them on Simday."

" What ? " exclaimed the hungry man, staring. " Is it a good sign,
that he wishes to see Ec^alty and Nobility ? "

"Jacques," said Defarge ; "judiciously show a cat milk, if you wish
her to thirst for it. Judiciously show a dog his natural prey, if you
wish him to bring it down one day."

Nothing more was said, and the mender of roads, being found
already dozing on the topmost stair, was advised to lay himself down
on the pallet-bed and take some rest. He needed no persuasion, and
was soon asleep.

Worse quarters than Defarge's wine-shop, could easily have been
found in Paris for a provincial slave of that degree. Saving for a
mysterious dread of madame, by which he was constantly haunted, his
life was very new and agreeable. But, madame sat all day at her
counter, so expressly unconscious of him, and so particularly deter-
mined not to perceive that his being there had any connection with
anything below the surface, that he shook in his wooden shoes when-
ever his eye lighted on her. For, he contended with himself that it
was impossible to foresee what that lady might pretend next ; and ho
felt assured that if she should take it into her brightly ornamented
head to pretend that she had seen him do a murder and afterwards
flay the victim, she would infallibly go through with it until the play
was played out.

Therefore, when Sunday came, the mender of roads was not en-
chanted (though he said he was) to find that madame was to accom-
pany monsieur and himself to Versailles. It was additionally
disconcerting to have madame knitting all the way there, in a public
conveyance ; it was additionally disconcerting yet, to have madame in
the crowd in the afternoon, still with her knitting in her hands as the
crowd waited to see the carriage of the King and Queen.

" You work hard, madame," said a man near her.

" Yes," answered Madame Defarge ; " I have a good deal to do."

" What do you make, madame ? "

" Many things."

" For instance "

" For instance," returned Madame Defarge, composedly, " shrouds.''

The man moved a little further away, as soon as he could, and the
ruender of roads fanned himself with his blue cap : feeling it mightily
close and oppressive. If he needed a King and Queen to restore him,
he was fortunate in having his remedy at hand ; for, soon the large-
fiaced King and the fair-faced Queen came in their golden coach,

Dolls and Birds. 469

attended by the shining Bull's Eye of tlieir Coui't, a glittering multi-
tude of laughing ladies and fine lords ; and in jewels and silks and
powder and splendour and elegantly spurning figures and handsomely
disdainful faces of both sexes, the mender of roads bathed himself, so
much to his temporary intoxication, that he cried Long live the King,
Long live the Queen, Long live everybody and everything ! as if he
had never heard of ubiquitous Jacques in his time. Then, there were
gardens, court-yards, terraces, fountains, green banks, more King and
Queen, more Bull's Eye, more lords and ladies, more Long live they
iJl ! until he absolutely wept with sentiment. During the whole of
this scene, which lasted some three hours, ho had plenty of shoiiting
ond weeping and sentimental company, and throughout Defargo held
him by the collar, as if to restrain him from flying at the objects of
his brief devotion and tearing them to pieces.

" Bravo ! " said Defarge, clapping him on the back when it was
over, like a patron ; " you are a good boy ! "

The mender of roads was now coming to himself, and was mis-
trustful of having made a mistake in his late demonstrations ; but no.

" You are the fellow we want," said Defarge, in his ear ; " you make
these fools believe that it will last for ever. Then, they are the more
insolent, and it is the nearer ended."

" Hey ! " cried the mender of roads, reflectively ; " that's true."

" These fools know nothing. While they despise your breath, and
would stop it for ever and ever, in you or in a hundred like you
rather than in one of their own horses or dogs, they only know what
your breath tells them. Let it deceive them, then, a little longer ; it
cannot deceive them too much."

Madame Defarge looked superciliously at the client, and nodded in
confirmation.

" As to you," said she, " you would shout and shed tears for any-
thing, if it made a show and a noise. Say ! Would you not ? "

" TiTily, madame, I think so. For the moment."

" If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were set upon them
to pluck them to pieces and despoil them for your own advantage,
you would pick out the richest and gayest. Say ! Would you not ? "

" Truly yes, madame."

" Yes. And if you were shown a flock of birds, unable to fly, and
were set upon them to strip them of their feathers for your own
advantage, you would set upon the birds of the finest feathers : would
you not ? "

" It is true, madame."

" You have seen both dolls and birds to-day," said Madame Defarge,
with a wave of her hand towards the place where they had last b^n
apparent ; " now, go home ! "

CHAPTER XVI.

STILL KNITTING.

Madame Defarge and monsieur her husband returned amicably to
the bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck in a blue cap toiled through
the darkness, and through the dust, and down the weary miles of
avenue by the wayside, slowly tending towards that point of the com-
pass where the chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave,
listened to the whispering trees. Such ample leisui-e had the stone
faces, now, for listening to the trees and to the fountain, that the few
village scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat and fragments
of dead stick to bum, strayed within sight of the great stone court-
yard and terrace staircase, had it borne in upon their starved fancy
that the expression of the faces was altered. A rumour just lived in
the village — had a faint and bare existence there, as its people had —
that when the knife struck home, the faces changed, from faces of
pride to faces of anger and pain ; also, that when that dangling figure
was liauled up forty feet above the fountain, they changed again, and
bore a cruel look of being avenged, which they would henceforth bear
for ever. In the stone face over the great window of the bed-chambei*
where the murder was done, two fine dints were pointed out in the
sculptured nose, which everybody recognised, and which nobody had
seen of old ; and on the scarce occasions when two or three ragged
peasants emerged from the crowd to take a hurried peep at Monsieur
the Marquis petrified, a skinny finger would not have pointed to it for
a minute, before they all started away among the moss and leaves, like
the more fortunate hares who could find a living there.

Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on
the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well — thousands of
acres of land — a whole province of France — all France itself — lay
under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hair-breadth line. So
does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a
twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light
and analyse the maimer of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences
may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and
act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it.

The Defarges, husband and wife, came lumbering under the star-
light, in their public vehicle, to that gate of Paris w*hereunto their
journey naturally tended. There was the usual stoppage at the
barrier guard-house, and the usual lanterns came glancing forth for
the usual examination and inquiry. Monsieur Defarge alighted ;
knowing one or two of the soldiery there, and one of the police. The
latter he was intimate with, and affectionately embraced.

"When Saint Antoine had again enfolded the Defarges in his dusky

John BarsacTs Description, 471

wings, and they, having finally alighted near the Saint's bonndaries,
were picking their way on foot through the black mud and offal of his
streets, Madame Defargo spoke to her husband :

" Say then, my friend ; what did Jacques of the police tell thee ? "

" Very little to-night, but all he Imows. There is another spy
commissioned for our quarter. There may be many more, for all that
he can say, but he knows of one."

" Eh well ! " said Madame Defarge, raising her eyebrows with a cool
business air. " It is necessary to register him. How do they call
that man ? "

« He is English."

" So much the better. His name ? "

'• Barsad," said Defarge, making it French by pronunciation. But,
he had been so careful to get it accurately, that he then spelt it with
perfect correctness.

" Barsad," repeated madame. " Good. Christian name ? "

« John."

" John Barsad," repeated madame, after murmuring it once to her-
self. " Good. His appearance ; is it known ? "

" Age, about forty years ; height, about five feet nine ; black hair ;
complexion dark ; generally, rather handsome visage ; eyes dark, face
thin, long, and sallow ; nose aquiline, but not straight, having a
peculiar inclination towards the left cheek ; expression, therefore,
sinister."

" Eh my faith. It is a portrait ! " said madame, laughing. " He
shall be registered to-morrow."

They turned into the wine-shop, which was closed (for it was mid-
night), and where Madame Defarge immediately took her post at her
desk, counted the small moneys that had been taken during her
absence, examined the stock, went through the entries in the book,
made other entries of her own, checked the serving man in every
possible way, and finally dismissed him to bed. Then she turned out
the contents of the bowl of money for the second time, and began
knotting them up in her handkerchief, in a chain of separate knots,
for safe keeping through the night. All this while, Defarge, with his
pipe in his mouth, walked up and down, complacently admiring, but
never interfering ; in which condition, indeed, as to the business and
his domestic affairs, he walked up and down through life. •

The night was hot, and the shop, close shut and surrounded by so
foul a neighbourhood, was ill-smelling. Monsieur Defarge's olfactory
sense was by no means delicate, but the stock of wine smelt much
stronger than it ever tasted, and so did the stock of rum and brandy
and aniseed. He whiffed the compound of scents away, as he put
down his smoked-out pipe.

" You are fatigued," said madame, raising her glance as she knotted
the money. " There are only the usual odours."

" I am a little tired," her husband acknowledged.

472 A Tale of Tivo Cities.

" You are a little depressed, too," said madarae, whose quick eyes
had never been so intent on the accounts, but they had had a ray or
two for hiin. " Oh, the men, the men ! "

" But my dear ! " began Defarge.

" But my dear ! " repeated madam e, nodding firmly ; " but my dear !
You are faint of heart to-night, my dear ! "

" Well, then," said Defarge, as if a thought were wrung out of his
breast, " it is a long time."

" It is a long time," repeated his wife ; " and when is it not a long
time ? Vengeance and retribution require a long time ; it is the
rule."

" It does not take a long time to strike a man with Lightning," said
Defarge.

*' How long," demanded madame, composedly, " does it take to make
and store the lightning ? Tell me."

Defarge raised his head thoughtfully, as if there were something in
that too.

" It does not take a long time," said madame, " for an earthquake to
swallow a town. Eh well ! Tell me how long it takes to prepare
the earthquake ? "

" A long time, I suppose," said Defarge.

" But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to pieces every-
thing before it. In the meantime, it is always preparing, though it is
not seen or heard. That is your consolation. Keep it."

She tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled a foe.

" I tell thee," said madame, extending her right hand, for emphasis,
" that although it is a long time on the road, it is on the road and
coming. I tell thee it never retreats, and never stops. I tell thee it
is always advancing. Look around and consider the lives of all the
world that we know, consider the faces of all the world that we know,
consider the rage and discontent to which the Jacquerie addresses
itself with more and more of certainty every hour. Can such things
last ? Bah ! I mock you."

" My brave wife," returned Defarge, standing before her with his
head a little bent and his hands clasped at his back, like a docile and
attentive pupil before his cate^'hist, " I do not question all this. But
it has lasted a long time, and it is possible — you know well, my wife,
it is possible — that it may not come, during our lives."

" Eh well ! How then ? " demanded madame, tying another knot,
as if there were another enemy strangled.

" Well ! " said Defarge, with a half complaining and haK apologetic
shrug. " We shall not see the triumph."

" We shall have helped it," returned madame, with her extended
hand in strong action. "Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I
believe, with all my soul, that we shall see the triumph. But even if
not, even if I knew certainly not, show me the neck of an aristocrat
and tyrant, and still I would • "

John Bar sad himself. 473

Then madamc, with hot teeth set, tied a very terrible knot indeed.

" Hold ! " cried Defarge, reddening a little as if lie felt charged
with cowardice ; " I too, my dear, >vill stop at nothing."

" Yes ! But it is your weakness that you sometimes need to see
your victim and your opportunity, to sustain you. Sustain yourself
without that. When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil ; but
wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained — not shown —
yet always ready."

Madame enforced the conclusion of this piece of advice by striking
her little counter with her chain of money as if she knocked its brains
out, and then gathering the heavy handkerchief under her arm in a
serene manner, and observing that it was time to go to bed.

Next noontide saw the admirable woman in her usual place in the
wine-shop, knitting away assiduously. A rose lay beside her, and if
she now and then glanced at the flower, it was with no infraction of
her usual pre-occupied air. There were a few customers, drinking or
not drinking, standing or seated, sprinkled about. The day was very
hot, and heaps of flies, who were extending their inquisitive and
adventurous perquisitions into all the glutinous little glasses near
madame, fell dead at the bottom. Their decease made no impression
on the other flies out promenading, who looked at them in the coolest
manner (as if they themselves were elephants, or something as far
removed), until they met the same fate. Curious to consider how
heedless flies are ! — perhaps they thought as much at Court that sunny
summer day.

A figure entering at the door threw a shadow on Madame Defarge
which she felt to be a new one. She laid down her knitting, and
began to pin her rose in her head-dress, before 'she looked at the
figure.

It was curious. The moment Madame Defarge took up the rose,
the customers ceased talking, and began gradually to drop out of the
wine-shop.

" Good-day, madame," said the new-comer.

" Good-day, monsieur."

She said it aloud, but added to herself, as she resumed her knitting :
" Hah ! Good-day, age about forty, height about five feet nine, black
hair, generally rather handsome visage, complexion dark, eyes dark,
thin long and sallow face, aquiline nose but not straight, having a
peculiar inclination towards the left cheek which imparts a sinister
expression ! Good-day, one and all ! "

" Have the goodness to give me a little glass of old cognac, and a
mouthful of cool fresh water, madame."

Madame complied with a polite air.

" Marvellous cognac this, madame ! "

It was the first time it had ever been so complimented, and Madame
Defarge knew enough of its antecedents to know better. She said,
however, that the cognac was flattered, and took up her knitting.

474 -^ Tale of Two Cities.

The visitor watched her fingers for a few moments, and took the
opportunity of observing the place in general.

" You knit with great skill, madame."

" I am accustomed to it."

" A pretty pattern too I "

" You think so ? " said madame, looking at him with a smile. ■

" Decidedly. May one ask what it is for ? "

" Pastime," said madame, still looking at him with a smile, while
her fingers moved nimbly.

" Not for use ? "

" That depends. I may find a use for it one day. If I do

well," said madame, drawing a breath and nodding her head with a
stern kind of coquetry, " I'll use it ! "

It was remarkable ; but, the taste of Saint Antoine seemed to be
decidedly opposed to a rose on the head-dress of Madame Defargo.
Two men had entered separately, and had been about to order drink,
when, catching sight of that novelty, they faltered, made a pretence
of looking about as if for some friend who was not there, and went
away. Nor, of those who had been there when this visitor entered,
was there one left. They had all dropped off. The spy had kept his
eyes open, but had been able to detect no sign. They had lounged
away in a poverty-stricken, purposeless, accidental manner, quite
natural and unimpeachable.

" John," thought madame, checking off her work as her fingers
knitted, and her eyes looked at the stranger, " Stay long enough,
and I shall knit ' Barsad ' before you go."

" Yoii have a husband, madame ? "

« I have."

" Children ? "

" No children."

" Business seems bad ? "

" Business is very bad ; the people are so poor."

" Ah, the unfortunate, miserable people ! So oppressed, too — as
you say."

*' As you say," madame retorted, correcting him, and deftly knitting
an extra something into his name that boded him no good.

"Pardon me; certainly it was I who said so, but you naturally
think so. Of conrse."

" I think ? " returned madame, in a high voice. " I and my husband
have enough to do to keep this wine-shop open, without thinking.
All we think, here, is how to live. That is the subject we think of,
and it gives us, from morning to night, enough to think about, without
embarrassing our heads concerning others. I think for others?
No, no."

The spy, who was there to pick up any crumbs he could find or
make, did not allow his baffled state to express itself in his sinister
face ; but, stood with an air of gossiping gallantry, leaning his elbow

Good-day, Jacques} 475

on Madame Defargo'a little counter, and occaBionally sipping his
cognac.

" A bad business this, madame, of Gaspard's execution. Ah ! the
poor Gaspard ! " With a sigh of great compassion.

" My faith ! " returned madame, coolly and lightly, " if people use
knives for such purposes, they have to pay for it. He knew before-
hand what the price of his luxury was ; he has paid the price."

" I believe," said the spy, dropping his soft voice to a tone that
invited confidence, and expressing an injured revolutionary suscepti-
bility in every muscle of his wicked face : " I believe there is much
compassion and anger in this neighbourhood, touching the poor
fellow ? Between ourselves."

*' Is there ? " asked madame, vacantly.

« Is there not ? "

" — Here is my husband ! " said Madame Defargc.

As the keeper of the wine-shop entered at the door, the spy saluted
him by touching his hat, and saying, with an engaging smile, " Good-
day, Jacques 1 " Defarge stopped short, and stared at him.

" Good-day, Jacques ! " the spy repeated ; with not quite so much
confidence, or quite so easy a smile under the stare.

" You deceive yourself, monsieur," returned the keeper of the wine-
shop. " You mistake me for another. That is not my name. I am
Ernest Defarge."

"It is all the same," said the spy, airily, but discomfited too:
"good-day!"

" Good-day ! " answered Defarge, drily.

" I was saying to madame, with whom I had the pleasure of chatting
when you entered, that they tell me there is — and no wonder I — much
sympathy and anger in Saint Antoine, touching the unhappy fate of
poor Gaspard."

" No one has told me so," said Defarge, shaking his head. " I know
nothing of it."

Having said it, he passed behind the little counter, and stood with
his hand on the back ^of his wife's chair, looking over that barrier
at the person to whom they were both opposed, and whom either of
them would have shot with the greatest satisfaction.

The spy, well used to his business, did not change his unconscious
attitude, but drained his little glass of cognac, took a sip of fresh
water, and asked for another glass of cognac. Madame Defarge
poured it out for him, took to her knitting again, and hummed a little
song over it.

" You seem to know this quarter well ; that is to say, better than I
do ? " observed Defarge.

" Not at all, but 1 hope to know it better. I am so profoundly
interested in its miserable inhabitants."

" Hah I " muttered Defarge.

" The pleasure of conversing with you, Monsieui' Defarge, recalls to

4/6 A Tale of Two Cities.

me," pursued the spy, " that I have the honour of cherishing somo
interesting associations with your name."

" Indeed ! " said Defarge, with much indifference.

" Yes, indeed. When Doctor Manetto was released, you, his old
domestic, had the charge of him, I know. He was delivered to you.
You see I am informed of the circumstances ? "

" Such is the fact, certainly," said Defarge. He had had it conveyed
to him, in an accidental touch of his wife's elbow as she knitted and
warbled, that he would do best to answer, but always with brevity.

" It was to you," said the spy, " that his daughter came ; and it was
from your care that his daughter took him, accompanied by a neat
brown monsieur; how is lie called? — in a little wig — Lorry — of the
bank of Tellson and Company — over to England."

" Such is the fact," repeated Defarge.

" Very interesting remembrances ! " said the spy. " I have known
Dr. Manette and his daughter, in England."

" Yes ? " said Defarge.

" You don't hear much about them now ? " said the spy.

" No," said Defarge.

" In effect," madame struck in, looking up from her work and her
little song, " we never hear about them. We received the news of
their safe arrival, and perhaps another letter, or perhaps two ; but,
since then, they have gradually taken their road in life — we, ours —
and we have held no correspondence."

"Perfectly so, madame," replied the spy. "She is going to bo
married."

" Going ? " echoed madame. " She was pretty enough to have been
married long ago. You English are cold, it seems to me."

" Oh ! You know I am English."

" I perceive your tongue is," returned madame ; " and what the
tongue is, I suppose the man is."

He did not take the identification as a compliment ; but he made
the best of it, and turned it off with a laugh. After sipping his
cognac to the end, he added :

" Yes, Miss Manette is going to be married. But not to an English-
man ; to one who, like herself, is French by birth. And speaking of
Gaspard (ah, poor Gaspard! It was cruel, cruel!), it is a curious
thing that she is going to marry the nephew of Monsieur the Marquis,
for whom Gaspard was exalted to that height of so many feet ; in
other words, the present Marquis. But he lives unknown in England,
he is no Marquis there ; he is Mr. Charles Darnay. D'Aulnais is the
name of his mother's family."

Madame Defarge knitted steadily, but the intelligence had a palpable
effect upon her husband. Do what he would, behind the little
counter, as to the striking of a light and the lighting of his pipe, he
was troubled, and his hand was not trustworthy. The spy would
have been no spy if he had failed to see it, or to record it in his mind.

Knitting a Great Net, 477

Having made, at least, tliis one hit, whatever it might prove to be
worth, and no customers coming in to help him to any other, Mr.
Barsad paid for what ho had drunk, and took his leave : taking
occasion to say, in a genteel manner, before he departed, that he
looked forward to the pleasure of seeing Monsieur and Madame
Defarge again. For some minutes after ho had emerged into the
outer presence of Saint Antoine, the husband and wife remained
exactly as ho had left them, lest he should come back.

" Can it bo true," said Defarge, in a low voice, looking down at his
wife as he stood smoking with his hand on the back of her chair :
" what he has said of Ma'amselle Manette ? "

" As he has said it," returned madame, lifting her eyebrows a little,
" it is probably false. But it may be true."

"If it is " Defarge began, and stopped.

" If it is ? " repeated his wife.

" — And if it does come, while we live to see it triumph — I hope,
for her sake. Destiny will keep her husband out of France."

"Her husband's destiny," said Madame Defarge, with her usual
composure, " will take him where he is to go, and will lead him to the
end that is to end him. That is all I know."

" But it is very strange — now, at least, is it not very strange " —
said Defarge, rather pleading with his wife to induce her to admit it,
" that, after all our sympathy for Monsieur her father, and herself,
her husband's name should be proscribed under your hand at this
moment, by the side of that infernal dog's who has just left us ? "

" Stranger things than that will happen when it does come,"
answered madame. " I have them both here, of a certainty ; and
they are both here for their merits ; that is enough."

She rolled up her knitting when she had said those words, and
presently took the rose out of the handkerchief that was wound about
her head. Either Saint Antoine had an instinctive sense that the
objectionable decoration was gone, or Saint Antoine was on the watch
for its disappearance ; howbeit, the Saint took courage to lounge in,
very shortly afterwards, and the wine-shop recovered its habitual
aspect.

In the evening, at which season of all others Saint Antoine turned
himseK inside out, and sat on door-steps and window-ledges, and
came to the comers of vile streets and courts, for a breath of air,
Madame Defarge with her work in her hand was accustomed to pass
from place to place and from group to group : a Missionary — there
were many like her — such as the world will do well never to breed
again. All the women knitted. They knitted worthless things ; but,
the mechanical work was a mechanical substitute for eating and drink-
ing ; the hands moved for the jaws and the digestive apparatus : if
the bony fingers had been still, the stomachs would have been more
famine-pinched.

But, as the fingers went, the eyes went, and the thoughts. And as

478 A Tale of Two Cities.

Madame Dofarge moved on from groxip to group, all tlireo went
quicker and fiercer among every little knot of women that sLo Lad
spoken with, and left behind.

Her husband smoked at his door, looking after her with admiration.
" A great woman," said he, " a strong woman, a grand woman, a fright-
fully grand woman ! "

Darkness closed around, and then came the ringing of church bells
and the distant beating of the military drums in the Palace Court-
Yard, as the women sat knitting, knitting. Darkness encompassed
thom. Another darkness was closing in as surely, when the church
bells, then ringing pleasantly in many an airy steeple over France,
should be melted into thundering cannon ; when the military drums
should be beating to drown a wretched voice, that night all-potent as
the voice of Power and Plenty, Freedom and Life. So much was
closing in about the women who sat knitting, knitting, that they their
very selves were closing in around a structure yet unbuilt, where
they were to sit knitting, knitting, counting dropping heads.

CHAPTER XVII.

ONE NIGHT.

Neveb did the sun go down with a brighter glory on the quiet corner
in Soho, than one memorable evening when the Doctor and his
daughter sat under the plane-tree together. Never did the moon rise
with a milder radiance over great London, than on that night when it
found them still seated under the tree, and shone upon their faces
through its leaves.

Lucie was to be married to-morrow. She had reserved this last
evening for her father, and they sat alone under the plane-tree.

" You are happy, my dear father ? "

«' Quite, my child."

They had said little, though they had been there a long time.
When it was yet light enough to work and read, she had neither
engaged herself in her usual work, nor had she read to him. She
had employed herself in both ways, at his side under the tree, many
and many a time ; but, this time was not quite like any other, and
nothing could make it so.

" And I am very happy to-night, dear father. I am deeply happy
in the love that Heaven has so blessed — my love for Charles, and
Charles's love for me. But, if my life were not to be still consecrated
to you, or if my marriage were so arranged as that it would part us,
even by the length of a few of these streets, I should be more unhappy
and self-reproachful now than I can tell you. Even as it is "

Father and Daughter. 479

Even as it was, she could not command her voice.

In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by the neck, and laid her
face upon his breast. In the moonlight which is always sad, as the
light of the sun itself is — as the light called human life is — at its
coming and its going.

" Dearest dear ! Can you tell me, this last time, that you feel quite,
quite sure, no new aflfections of mine, and no new duties of mine, will
ever interpose between us? J know it well, but do you know it?
In your own heart, do you feel quite certain ? "

Her father answered, with a cheerful firmness of conviction he
could scarcely have assumed, " Quite sure, my darling ! More than
that," he added, as he tenderly kissed her : " my future is far brighter,
Lucie, seen through your marriage, than it could have been— nay,
than it ever was — without it."

" If I could hope tliat, my father ! "

"Believe it, love! Indeed it is so. Consider how natural and
how plain it is, my dear, that it should be so. You, devoted and
young, cannot fully appreciate the anxiety I have felt that your life
should not be wasted "

She moved her hand towards his lips, but he took it in his, and
repeated the word.

" — wasted, my child — should not be wasted, struck aside from the
natural order of things — for my sake. Your unselfishness cannot
entirely comprehend how much my mind has gone on this ; but, only
ask yourself, how could my happiness be perfect, while yours was
incomplete ? "

" If I had never seen Charles, my father, I should have been quite
happy with you."

He smiled at her unconscious admission that she would have been
unhappy without Charles, having seen him ; and replied :

" My child, you did see him, and it is Charles. If it had not been
Charles, it would have been another. Or, if it had been no other, I
should have been the cause, and then the dark part of my life would
Iiave cast its shadow beyond myself, and would have fallen on
you."

It was the first time, except at the trial, of her ever hearing him
refer to the period of his suffering. It gave her a strange and new
sensation while his words were in her ears ; and she remembered it
long afterwards.

" See 1 " said the Doctor of Beauvais, raising his hand towards the
moon. " I have looked at her from my prison-window, when I could
not bear her light. I have looked at her when it has been such
torture to me to think of her shining upon what I had lost, that I
have beaten my head against my prison-walls. I have looked at her,
in a state so dull and lethargic, that I have thought of nothing but
the number of horizontal lines I could draw across her at the full,
and the number of perpendicular lines with which 1 could intersect

480 A Tale of Two Cities.

them." Ho added in his inward and pondering manner, as he looljed
at the moon, "It was twenty either way, I remember, and the
twentieth was difficult to squeeze in."

The strange thrill with which she heard him go back to that time,
deepened as he dwelt upon it ; but, there was nothing to shock her in
the manner of his reference. He only seemed to contrast his present
cheerfulness and felicity with the dire endurance that was over.

" I have looked at her, speculating thousands of times upon the
unborn child from whom I had been rent. Whether it was alive.
Whether it had been born alive, or the poor mother's shock had killed
it. Whether it was a son who would some day avenge his father.
(There was a time in my imprisonment, when my desire for vengeance
was unbearable.) Whether it was a son who would never know his
father's story ; Avho might even live to weigh the possibility of his
father's having disappeared of his own will and act. Whether it was
a daughter who would grow to be a woman."

She drew closer to him, and kissed his cheek and his hand.

" I have pictured my daughter, to myself, as perfectly forgetful of
me — rather, altogether ignorant of me, and unconscious of me. I have
cast up the years of her age, year after year. I have seen her married
to a man who knew nothing of my fate. I have altogether perished
from the remembrance of the living, and in the next generation my
place was a blank."

" My father ! Even to hear that you had such thoughts of a
daughter who never existed, strikes to my heart as if I had been that
child."

" YoUj Lucie ? It is out of the consolation and restoration you have
brought to me, that these remembrances arise, and pass between us
and the moon on this last night. — What did I say just now ? "

" She knew nothing of you. She cared nothing for you."

" So ! But on other moonlight nights, when the sadness and the
silence have touched me in a different way — have affected me with
something as like a sorrowful sense of peace, as any emotion that had
pain for its foundations could — I have imagined her as coming to me
in my cell, and leading me out into the freedom beyond the fortress.
I have seen her image in the moonlight often, as I now see you ;
except that I never held her in my arms ; it stood between the little
grated window and the door. But, you undei"stand that that was not
the child I am speaking of ? "

" The figure was not ; the — the — image ; the fancy ? "

" No. That was another thing. It stood before my disturbed sense
of sight, but it never moved. The phantom that my mind pursued,
was another and more real child. Of her outward appearance I know
no more than that she was like her mother. The other had that like-
ness too — as you have — but was not the same. Can you follow me,
Lucie ? Hardly, I think ? I doubt you must have been a solitary
prisoner to understand these perplexed distinctions."

Dark Prison-shadoivs. 481

His collected and calm manner conld not prevent her blood from
running cold, as ho thns tried to anatomise his old condition.

" In that more peaceful state, I have imagined her, in the moonlight,
coming to me and taking me out to show me that the home of her
married life was full of her loving remembrance of her lost father.
My picture was in her room, and I was in her prayers. Her life was
active, cheerful, useful ; but my poor history pervaded it all."

" I was that child, my father. I was not half so good, but in my
love that was I."

" And she showed me her children," said the Doctor of Beauvais,
" and they had heard of me, and had been taught to pity me. When
they passed a prison of the State, they kept far from its frowning
walls, and looked up at its bars, and spoke in whispers. She could
never deliver me ; I imagined that she always brought me back after
showing me such things. But then, blessed with the relief of tears, I
fell upon my knees, and blessed her."

" I am that child, I hope, my father. 0 my dear, my dear, will you
bless mo as fervently to-moiTow ? "

" Lucie, I recall these old troubles in the reason that I have to-night
for loving you better than words can tell, and thanking God for my
great happiness. My thoughts, when they were wildest, never rose
near the happiness that I have known with you, and that we have
before us."

He embraced her, solemnly commended her to Heaven, and humbly
thanked Heaven for having bestowed her on him. By-and-by, they
went into the house.

There was no one bidden to the marriage but Mr. Lorry ; there was
even to be no bridesmaid but the gaunt Miss Pross. The marriage
was to make no change in their place of residence ; they had been
able to extend it, by taking to themselves the upper rooms formerly
belonging to the apocryphal invisible lodger, and they desired nothing
more.

Doctor Manette was very cheerful at the little supper. They were
only three at table, and Miss Pross made the third. He regretted
that Charles was not there ; was more than half disposed to object to
the loving little plot that kept him away ; and drank to him affection-
ately.

So, the time came for him to bid Lucie good-night, and they separated.
But, in the stillness of the third hour of the morning, Lucie camo
down-stairs again, and stole into his room ; not free from unshaped
fears, beforehand.

All things, however, were in their places ; all was quiet ; and he
lay asleep, his white hair picturesque on the untroubled pillow, and
his hands lying quiet on the coverlet. She put her needless candle
in the shadow at a distance, crept up to his bed, and put her lips to
his ; then, leaned over him, and looked at him.

Into his handsome face, the bitter waters of captivity had woms

2£

482 A Tale of Two Cities.

but, he covered up their tracks with a determination so strong, that
he held the mastery of them even in his sleep. A more remarkable
face in its quiet, resolute, and guarded struggle with an unseen
assailant, was not to be beheld in all the wide dominions of sleep, that
night.

She timidly laid her hand on his dear breast, and put up a prayer
that she might ever be as true to him as her love aspired to be, and
as his sorrows deserved. Then, she withdrew her hand, and kissed
his lips once more, and went away. So, the sunrise came, and the
shadows of the leaves of the plane-tree moved upon his face, as softly
as her lips had moved in praying for him.

CHAPTER XVIII.

NINE DAYS.

The marriage-day was shining brightly, and they were ready outside
the closed door of the Doctor's room, where he was speaking with
Charles Darnay. They were ready to go to church ; the beautiful
bride, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Press — to whom the event, through a
gradual process of reconcilement to the inevitable, would have been
one of absolute bliss, but for the yet lingering consideration that her
brother Solomon should have been the bridegroom.

" And so," said Mr. Lorry, who could not sufficiently admire the
bride, and who had been moving round her to take in every point of
her quiet, pretty dress ; " and so it was for this, my sweet Lucie, that
I brought you across the Channel, such a baby! Lord bless me!
How little I thought what I was doing ! How lightly I valued the
obligation I was conferring on my friend Mr. Charles ! "

" You didn't mean it," remarked the matter-of-fact Miss Press, " and
therefore how could you know it ? Nonsense ! "

" Really ? Well ; but don't cry," said the gentle Mr. Lorry.

" I am not crying," said Miss Press ; " you are."

" I, my Press ? " (By this time, Mr. Lorry dared to be pleasant
with her, on occasion.)

" You were, just now ; I saw you do it, and I don't wonder at it.
Such a present of plate as you have made 'em, is enough to bring tears
into anybody's eyes. There's not a fork or a spoon in the collection,"
said Miss Press, " that I didn't ciy over, last night after the box came,
till I couldn't see it."

" 1 am highly gratified," said Mr. Lorry, " though, upon my honour,
I had no intention of rendering those trifling articles of remembrance
invisible to any one. Dear me ! This is an occasion that makes a
man speculate on all he has lost. Dear, dear, dear ! To think that

Lucie's Marriage, 483

there might have been a Mrs. Lorry, any time these fifty years
almost ! "

" Not at all 1 " From Miss Pross.

" You think there never might have been a Mrs. Lorry ? " asked the
gentleman of that name.

" Pooh ! " rejoined Miss Pross ; " you were a bachelor in your
cradle."

" Well ! " observed Mr. Lorry, beamingly adjusting his little wig,
" that seems probable, too."

" And you were cut out for a bachelor," pursued Miss Pross, " before
you were put in your cradle."

" Then, I think," said Mr. Lorry, " that I was very unhandsomely
dealt with, and that I ought to have had a voice in the selection of my
pattern. Enough ! Now, ray dear Lucie," drawing his arm sooth-
ingly round her waist, " I hear them moving in the next room, and
Miss Pross and I, as two formal folks of business, are anxious not to
lose the final opportunity of saying something to you that you wish to
hear. You leave your good father, my dear, in hands as earnest and
as loving as your own ; he shall be taken every conceivable care of ;
during the next fortnight, while you aro in Warwickshire and there-
abouts, even Tellson's shall go to the wall (comparatively speaking)
before him. And when, at the fortnight's end, he comes to join you
and your beloved husband, on your other fortnight's trip in Wales,
you shall say that we have sent him to you in the best health and in
the happiest frame. Now, I hear Somebody's step coming to the
door. Let me kiss my dear girl with an old-fashioned baclielor
blessing, before Somebody comes to claim his own."

For a moment, he held the fair face from him to look at the well-
remembered expression on the forehead, and then laid the bright
golden hair against his little brown wig, with a genuine tenderness
and delicacy which, if such things be old-fashioned, were as old as
Adam.

The door of the Doctor's room opened, and he came out with
Charles Damay. He was so deadly pale — which had not been the
case when they went in together — that no vestige of colour was to bo
seen in his face. But, in the composure of his manner he was un-
altered, except that to the shrewd glance of Mr. Lorry it disclosed
some shadowy indication that the old air of avoidance and dread had
lately passed over him, like a cold wind.

He gave his arm to his daughter, and took her down-stairs to the
chariot which Mr. Lorry had hired in honour of the day. The rest
followed in another carriage, and soon, in a neighbouring church, where
no strange eyes looked on, Charles Damay and Lucie Manette were
happily married.

Besides the glancing tears that shone among the smiles of the little
group when it was done, some diamonds, very bright and sparkling,
glanced on the bride's hand, which were newly released from the dark

4^4 ^ '^^^^ ^ *^'^o Cities.

obscurity of one of Mr. Lorry's pockets. They returned home to
breakfast, and all went well, and in due course the golden hair that
had mingled with the poor shoemaker's white locks in the Paris
garret, were mingled with them again in the morning sunlight, on the
threshold of the door at parting.

It was a hard parting, though it was not for long. But her father
cheered her, and said at last, gently disengaging himself from her
enfolding arms, " Take her, Charles ! She is yours ! "

And her agitated hand waved to them from a chaise window, and
she was gone.

The corner being out of the way of the idle and curious, and the
preparations having been very simple and few, the Doctor, Mr. Lorry,
and Miss Press, were left quite alone. It was when they turned into
the welcome shade of the cool old hall, that Mr. Lorry observed a
great change to have come over the Doctor; as if the golden arm
uplifted there, had struck him a poisoned blow.

He had naturally repressed much, and some revulsion might have
been expected in him when the occasion for repression was gone. But,
it was the old scared lost look that troubled Mr. Lorry ; and through
his absent manner of clasping his head and drearily wandering away
into his own room when they got up-staii's, Mr. Lorry was reminded
of Defarge the wine-shop keeper, and the starlight ride.

" I think," he whispered to Miss Pross, after anxious consideration,
" I think we had best not speak to him just now, or at all disturb
him. I must look in at Tellson's ; so I will go there at once and
come back presently. Then, we will take him a ride into the country,
and dine there, and all will be well."

It was easier for Mr. Lorry to look in at Tellson's, than to look out
of Tellson's. He was detained two hours. When he came back, he
ascended the old staircase alone, having asked no question of the
servant ; going thus into the Doctor's rooms, he was stopped by a low
sound of knocking.

" Good God ! " he said, with a start. " What's that '? "

Miss Pross, with a terrified face, was at his ear. " O me, 0 me !
All is lost ! " cried she, wringing her hands. " What is to be told to
Ladybird ? He doesn't know me, and is making shoes ! "

Mr. Lorry said what he could to calm her, and went himself into the
Doctor's room. The bench was turned towards the light, as it had
been when he had seen the shoemaker at his work before, and his
head was bent down, and he was very busy.

" Doctor Manette. My dear friend, Doctor Manette ! "

The Doctor looked at him for a moment — half inquiringly, half as
if he were angry at being spoken to — and bent over his work again.

He had laid aside his coat and waistcoat ; his shirt was open at the
throat, as it used to be when he did that work ; and even the old
haggard, faded surface of face had come back to him. He worked
hard — impatiently — as if in some sense of having been interrupted.

TJie Terrible Slwemaker. 485

Mr. Lorry glanced at the work in his hand, and observed that it
was a shoe of the old size and shape. He took np another that was
lying by him, and asked what it was ?

" A young lady's walking shoe," ho muttered, without looking up.
" It ought to have been finished long ago. Let it be."

" But, Doctor Manette. Look at me ! "

He obeyed, in the old mechanically submissive manner, without
pausing in his work.

" You know me, my dear friend ? Think again. This is not your
proper occupation. Think, dear friend ! "

Nothing would induce him to speak more. Ho looked up, for an
instant at a time, when he was requested to do so ; but, no persuasion
would extract a word from him. He worked, and worked, and worked,
in silence, and words fell on him as they would have fallen on an
ccholess wall, or on the air. The only ray of hope that Mr. Lorry
could discover, was, that he sometimes furtively looked up without
being asked. In that, there seemed a faint expression of curiosity or
perplexity — as though he were trying to reconcile some doubts in his
mind.

Two things at once impressed themselves on Mr. Lorry, as im-
portant above all others ; the first, that this must bo kept secret from
Lucie ; the second, that it must be kept secret from all who knew him.
In conjunction with Miss Press, he took immediate steps towards the
latter precaution, by giving out that the Doctor was not well, and
required a few days of complete rest. In aid of the kind deception to
be practised on his daughter, Miss Press was to write, describing his
having been called away professionally, and referring to an imaginary
letter of two or three hurried lines in his own hand, represented to
have been addressed to her by the same post.

These measures, advisable to be taken in any case, Mr. Lorry took
in the hope of his coming to himself. If that should happen soon, he
kept another course in reserve ; which was, to have a certain opinion
that he thought the best, on the Doctor's case.

In the hope of his recovery, and of resort to this third cotirse being
thereby rendered practicable, Mr. Lorry resolved to watch him atten-
tively, with as little appearance as possible of doing so. He therefore
made ari'angements to absent himself from Tellson's for the first time
in his life, and took his post by the window in the same room.

He was not long in discovering that it was worse than useless to
speak to him, since, on being pressed, he became worried. He
abandoned that attempt on the first day, and resolved merely to keep
himself always before him, as a silent protest against the delusion into
which he had fallen, or was falling. He remained, therefore, in his
seat near the window, reading and writing, and expressing in as many
pleasant and natural ways as he could think of, that it was a free
place.
Doctor Manetto took what was given him to cat and drink, and

486 A Tale of Two Cities,

worked on, that first day, until it was too dark to see — worked on,
half an hour after Mr. Lorry conld not have seen, for his life, to read
or write. When he put his tools aside as useless, until morning, Mr.
Lorry rose and said to him :

"Will you go out?"

He looked down at the floor on either side of him in the old
manner, looked up in the old manner, and repeated in the old low
voice :

"Out?"

" Yes ; for a walk with me. Why not ? "

He made no effort to say why not, and said not a word more. But,
Mr, Lorry thought he saw, as he leaned forward on his bench in the
dusk, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, that ho
was in some misty way asking himself, " Why not ? " The sagacity
of the man of business perceived an advantage here, and determined
to hold it.

Miss Pross and he divided the night into two watches, and observed
him at intervals from the adjoining room. He paced up and down for
a long time before he lay down ; but, when he did finally lay himself
down, he fell asleep. In the morning, he was up betimes, and went
straight to his bench and to work.

On this second day, Mr. Lorry saluted him cheerfully by his name,
and spoke to him on topics that had been of late familiar to them.
He returned no rej)ly, but it was evident that he heard what was said,
and that he thought about it, however confusedly. This encouraged
Mr. Lorry to have Miss Pross in with her work, several times during
the day; at those times, they quietly spoke of Lucie, and of her
father then present, precisely in the usual manner, and as if there
were nothing amiss. This was done without any demonstrative
accompaniment, not long enough, or often enough to harass him ; and
it lightened Mr. Lorry's friendly heart to believe that he looked up
oftener, and that he appeared to be stirred by some perception of
inconsistencies surrounding him.

When it fell dark again, Mr. Lorry asked him as before :

" Dear Doctor, will you go out ? "

As before, he repeated, " Out ? "

" Yes ; for a walk with me. Why not ? "

This time, Mr. Lorry feigned to go out when he could extract no
answer from him, and, after remaining absent for an hour, returned.
In the meanwhile, the Doctor had removed to the seat in the window,
and had sat there looking down at the plane-tree ; but, on Mr.
Lorry's return, he slipped away to his bench.

The time went very slowly on, and Mr. Lorry's hope darkened, and
his heart grew heavier again, and grew yet heavier and heavier every
day. The third day came and went, the fourth, the fifth. Five days,
six days, seven days, eight days, nine days.

With a hope ever darkening, and with a heart always growing

The Doctor recovers, 487

heavier and heavier, Mr. Lorry passed through this anxious time.
The secret was well kept, and Lucie was unconscious and happy ; but
he could not fail to observe that the shoemaker, whose liand had been
a little out at first, was growing dreadfully skilful, and that he had
never been so intent on his work, and that his hands had never been
so nimble and expert, as in the dusk of the ninth evening.

CHAPTER XIX.

AN OPINION.

Worn out by anxious watching, Mr. Lorry fell asleep at his post. On
the tenth morning of his suspense, he was startled by the shining of
the sun into the room where a heavy slumber had overtaken him
when it was dark night.

He rubbed his eyes and roused himself ; but he doubted, when ho
had done so, whether he was not still asleep. For, going to the door
of the Doctor's room and looking in, he perceived that the shoemaker's
bench and tools were put aside again, and that the Doctor himself sat
reading at the window. He was in his usual morning dress, and his
face (which Mr. Lorry could distinctly see), though still very pale,
was calmly studious and attentive.

Even when he had satisfied himself' that he was awake, Mr. Lorry
felt giddily uncertain for some few moments whether the late shoe-
making might not be a disturbed dream of his own ; for, did not his
eyes show him his friend before him in his accustomed clothing and
aspect, and employed as usual ; and was there any sign within their
range, that the change of which he had so strong an impression had
actually happened ?

It was but the inquiry of his first confusion and astonishment, the
answer being obvious. If the impression were not produced by a real
corresponding and sufficient cause, how came he, Jarvis Lorry, there ?
How came he to have fallen asleep, in his clothes, on the sofa in Dr.
Manette's consulting-room, and to be debating these points outside the
Doctor's bedroom door in the early morning ?

Within a few minutes. Miss Press stood whispering at his side. If
he had had any particle of doubt left, her talk would of necessity havo
resolved it ; but he was by that time clear-headed, and had none. Ho
advised that they should let the time go by until the regular breakfast-
hour, and should then meet the Doctor as if nothing unusual had
occurred. If he appeared to be in his customary state of mind,
Mr. Lorry would then cautiously proceed to seek direction and
guidance from the opinion he had been, in his anxiety, so anxious to
obtain.

488 A Tale of Tzvo Cities.

Miss Pross submitting herself to his judgment, the scheme was
worked out with care. Having abundance of time for his usual
methodical toilette, Mr. Lorry presented himself at the breakfast-hour
in his usual white linen, and with his usual neat leg. The Doctor
was summoned in the usual way, and came to breakfast.

So far as it was possible to comprehend him without overstepping
those delicate and gradual approaches which Mr. Lorry felt to be the
only safe advance, he at first supposed, that his daughter's marriage
had taken place yesterday. An incidental allusion, purposely thrown
out, to the day of the week, and the day of tlie month, set him think-
ing and counting, and evidently made him uneasy. In all other
respects, however, he was so composedly himself, that Mr. Lorry
determined to have the aid he sought. And that aid was his own.

Therefore, when the breakfast was done and cleared away, and he
and the Doctor were left together, Mr. Lorry said, feelingly :

" My dear Manette, I am anxious to have your opinion, in con-
fidence, on a very curious case in which I am deeply interested ; that
is to say, it is very curious to me ; perhaps, to your better informa-
tion it may be less so."

Glancing at his hands, which wore discoloured by his late work, the
Doctor looked troubled, and listened attentively. He had already
glanced at his hands more than once.

" Doctor Manette," said Mr. Lorry, touching him affectionately on
the arm, " the case is the case of a particularly dear friend of mine.
Pray give your mind to it, and advise me well for his sake — and
above all, for his daughter's — his daughter's, my dear Manette."

"If I understand," said the Doctor, in a subdued tone, "some
mental shock ? "

« Yes ! "

" Be explicit," said the Doctor. " Spare no detail."

Mr. Lorry saw that they understood one another, and proceeded.

" My dear Manette, it is the case of an old and a prolonged shock,
of great acuteness and severity to the affections, the feelings, the — the
— as you express it — the mind. The mind. It is the case of a shock
under which the sufferer was borne down, one cannot say for how
long, because I believe he cannot calculate the time himself, and there
are no other means of getting at it. It is the case of a shock from
which the sufferer recovered, by a process that he cannot trace him-
self— as I once heard him publicly relate in a striking manner. It is
the case of a shock from which he has recovered, so completely, as to
be a highly intelligent man, capable of close application of mind, and
great exertion of body, and of constantly making fresh additions to
his stock of knowledge, which was already very large. But, unfortu-
nately, there has been," he paused and took a deep breath — " a slight
relapse."

The Doctor, in a low voice, asked, " Of how long duration ? "

*' Nine days and nights,"

Consultation with the Doctor. 489

"How did it show itself? I infer," glancing at his hands again,
" in the resumption of some old pnrsnit connected with the shock ? "

«' That is the fact."

" Now, did yon ever see him," asked the Doctor, distinctly and
collectedly, though in the same low voice, " engaged in that pursuit
originally ? "

" Once."

" And when the relapse fell on him, was he in most respects — or in
all respects — as he was then ? "

" I think in all respects."

" You spoke of his daughter. Docs his daughter know of the
relapse ? "

" No. It has been kept from her, and I hope will always be kept
from her. It is known only to myself, and to one other who may bo
trusted."

The Doctor grasped his hand, and murmured, " That was very
kind. That was very thoughtful ! " Mr. Loixy grasped his hand in
return, and neither of the two spoke for a little while.

" Now, my dear Manette," said Mr. Lorry, at length, in his most
considerate and most affectionate way, " I am a mere man of business,
and unfit to cope with such intricate and difficult matters. I do not
possess the kind of information necessary ; I do not possess the kind
of intelligence ; I want guiding. There is no man in this world on
whom I could so rely for right guidance, as on you. Tell me, how
does this relapse come about ? Is there danger of another ? Could
a repetition of it be prevented ? How should a repetition of it be
treated ? How does it come about at all ? What can I do for my
friend ? No man ever can have been more desirous in his heart to
serve a fiiend, than I am to serve mine, if I knew how. But I don't
know how to originate, in such a case. If your sagacity, knowledge,
and experience, could put me on the right track, I might be able to
do so much ; unenlightened and undirected, I can do so little. Piay
discuss it with me ; pray enable me to see it a little more clearly, and
teach me how to be a little more useful."

Doctor Manette sat meditating after these earnest words were
spoken, and Mr. Lorry did not press him.

" I think it probable," said the Doctor, breaking silence with an
effort, " that the relapse you have described, my dear friend, was not
quite unforeseen by its subject."

" Was it dreaded by him ? " Mr. Lorry ventured to ask.

" Very much." He said it with an involuntary shudder.

" You have no idea how such an apprehension weighs on the
sufferer's mind, and how difficult — how almost impossible — it is, for him
to force himself to utter a word upon the topic that oppresses him."

" Would he," asked Mr. Lorry, " be sensibly relieved if he could
prevail upon himself to impart that secret brooding to any one, when
it is on him ? "

490 A Tale of Two Cities.

" I think so. But it is, as I have told you, next to impossible. I
even believe it — in some cases — to be quite impossible."

"Now," said Mr. Lorry, gently laying his hand on the Doctor's
arm again, after a short silence on both sides, " to what would you
refer this attack ? "

" I believe," returned Doctor Manette, " that there had been a
strong and extraordinary revival of the train of thought and remem-
brance that was the first cause of the malady. Some intense associa-
tions of a most distressing nature were vividly recalled, I think. It
is probable that there had long been a dread lurking in his mind,
that those associations would be recalled — say, under certain circum-
stances— say, on a particular occasion. He tried to prepare himself
in vain ; perhaps the effort to prepare himself made him less able to
bear it."

" Would he remember what took place in the relapse ? " asked Mr.
Lorry, with natural hesitation.

The Doctor looked desolately round the room, shook his head, and
answered, in a low voice, " Not at all."

" Now, as to the future," hinted Mr. Lorry.

" As to the future," said the Doctor, recovering firmness, " I should
have great hope. As it pleased Heaven in its mercy to restore him
so soon, I should have great hope. He, yielding under the pressure
of a complicated something, long dreaded and long vaguely foreseen
and contended against, and recovering after the cloud had bui'st and
passed, I should hope that the worst was over."

" Well, well ! That's good comfort. I am thankful ! " said Mr.
Lorry.

" I am thankful ! " repeated the Doctor, bending his head with
reverence.

"There are two other points," said Mr. Lorry, "on which I am
anxious to be instructed. I may go on ? "

" You cannot do your friend a better service." The Doctor gave
him his hand.

" To the first, then. He is of a studious habit, and unusually
energetic ; he applies himself with great ardour to the acquisition of
professional knowledge, to the conducting of experiments, to many
things. Now, does he do too much ? "

" I think not. It may be the character of his mind, to be always
in singular need of occupation. That may bo, in part, natural to it ;
in part, the result of affliction. The less it was occupied with healthy
things, the more it would bo in danger of turning in the unhealthy
direction. He may have observed himself, and made the discovery."

" You are sure that he is not under too great a strain ? "

" I think I am quite sure of it."

" My dear Manette, if he were overworked now "

" My dear Lorry, I doubt if that could easily be. There has been
a violent stress in one direction, and it needs a counterweight."

Approaching Sacrifice of an Old Companion. 491

" Excuse me, as a persistent man of business. Assuming for a
moment, that he was overworked ; it would show itself in some renewal
of this disorder ? "

" I do not think so. I do not think," said Doctor Manette with the
firmness of self-conviction, " that anything but the one train of asso-
ciation would renew it. I think that, henceforth, nothing but some
extraordinary jarring of that chord could renew it. After what has
happened, and after his recovery, I find it difficult to imagine any
such violent sounding of that string again. I trust, and I almost
believe, that the circumstances likely to renew it are exhausted."

He spoke with the diffidence of a man who knew how slight a thing
would overset the delicate organisation of the mind, and yet 'with the
confidence of a man who had slowly won his assurance out of personal
endurance and distress. It was not for his friend to abate that
confidence. He professed himself more relieved and encouraged than
he really was, and approached his second and last point. He felt it
to be the most difficult of all; but, remembering his old Sunday
morning conversation with Miss Pross, and remembering what he had
seen in the last nine days, he knew that he must face it.

"The occupation resumed under the influence of this passing
affliction so happily recovered from," said Mr. Lorry, clearing his
throat, "we will call — Blacksmith's work, Blacksmith's work. Wo
will say, to put a case and for the sake of illustration, that he had
been used, in his bad time, to work at a little forgo. We will say
that he was unexpectedly found at his forge again. Is it not a pity
that he should keep it by him ? "

The Doctor shaded his forehead with his hand, and beat his foot
nervously on the ground.

" He has always kept it by him," said Mr. Lorry, with an anxious
look at his friend. " Now, would it not be better that he should lot
it go?"

Still, the Doctor, with shaded forehead, beat his foot nervously on
the ground.

" You do not find it easy to advise me ? " said Mr. Lorry. " I quito

understand it to be a nice question. And yet I think " And

there he shook his head, and stopped.

" You see," said Doctor Manette, turning to him after an uneasy
pause, " it is very hard to explain, consistently, the innermost work-
ings of this poor man's mind. He once yearned so frightfully for
that occupation, and it was so welcome when it came ; no doubt it
relieved his pain so much, by substituting the perplexity of the fingers
for the perplexity of the brain, and by substituting, as he became
more practised, the ingenuity of the hands, for the ingenuity of the
mental tortui-e ; that he has never been able to bear the thought of
putting it quite out of his reach. Even now, when I believe he is
more hopeful of himself than he has ever been, and even speaks of
himself with a kind of confidence, the idea that he might need that

492 A Tale of Tzvo Cities.

old employment, and not find it, gives him a sudden sense of terror,
like that which ono may fancy strikes to the heart of a lost child."

Ho looked like his illustration, as he raised his eyes to Mr. Lorry's
face.

" But may not — mind ! I ask for information, as a plodding man of
business who only deals with such material objects as guineas, shillings,
and bank-notes — may not the retention of the thing involve the
retention of the idea? If the thing were gone, my dear Manette,
might not the fear go with it ? In short, is it not a concession to the
misgiving, to keep the forge ? "

There was another silence.

" You see, too," said the Doctor, tremulously, " it is such an old
companion,"

" I would not keep it," said Mr. Lorry, shaldug his head ; for he
gained in firmness as he saw the Doctor disquieted. "I would
recommend him to sacrifice it. I only want your authority. I am
sure it does no good. Come ! Give me your authority, like a dear
good man. For his daughter's sake, my dear Manette ! "

Very strange to see what a struggle there was within him !

" In her name, then, let it be done ; I sanction it. But, I would
not take it away while he was present. Let it bo removed when he is
not there ; let him miss his old companion after an absence."

Mr. Lorry readily engaged for that, and the conference was ended.
They passed the day in the country, and the Doctor was quite restored.
On the throe following days he remained perfectly well, and on the
fourteenth day he went away to join Lucie and her husband. The
precaution that had been taken to account for his silence, Mr. Lorry
had previously explained to him, and he had written to Lucie in
accordance with it, and she had no suspicions.

On the night of the day on which he loft the house, Mr. Lorry
went into his room with a chopper, saw, chisel, and hammer, attended
by Miss Press carrying a light. There, with closed doors, and in a
mysterious and guilty manner, Mr. Lorry hacked the shoemaker's
bench to j^ieces, while Miss Press held the candle as if she were
assisting at a murder — for which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no
unsuitable figure. The burning of the body (previously reduced to
pieces convenient for the purpose) was commenced without delay in
the kitchen fire ; and the tools, shoes, and leather, were buried in the
garden. So wicked do destruction and secrecy appear to honest
minds, that Mr. Lorry and Miss Press, while engaged in the com-
mission of their deed and in the removal of its traces, almost felt, and
almost looked, like accomplices iu a horrible crime.

•1

CHAPTER XX.

A PLEA.

When tbo nowly-married pair camo home, the first person who
appeared, to ofier his congratulations, was Sydney Carton. They had
not been at home many hours, when he presented himself. He was
not improved in habits, or in looks, or in manner; but there was
a certain rugged air of fidelity about him, which was new to the
observation of Charles Darnay.

He watched his opportunity of taking Darnay aside into a window,
and of speaking to him when no one overheard.

" Mr. Darnay," said Carton, " I wish we might be friends."

" We are already friends, I hope."

"You are good enough to say so, as a fashion of speech; but, I
don't mean any fashion of speech. Indeed, when I say I wish we
might be friends, I scarcely mean quite that, either."

Charles Darnay — as was natural — asked him, in all good-humour
and good-fellowship, what he did mean ?

" Upon my life," said Carton, smiling, " I find that easier to com-
prehend in my own mind, than to convey to yours. However, let me
try. You remember a certain famous occasion when I was more
drunk than — than usual ? "

"I remember a certain famous occasion when you forced me to
confess that you had been drinking."

" I remember it too. The curse of those occasions is heavy upon
me, for I always remember them, I hope it may be taken into
account one day, when all days are at an end for me! Don't bo
alarmed ; I am not going to preach."

"I am not at all alarmed. Earnestness in you, is anything but
alarming to me."

" Ah ! " said Carton, with a careless wave of his hand, as if he
waved that away. "On the drunken occasion in question (one of a
large number, as you know), I was insufferable about liking you, and
not liking you. I wish you would forget it."

" I forgot it long ago."

" Fashion of speech again ! But, Mr. Darnay, oblivion is not so
easy to me, as you represent it to be to you. I have by no means
forgotten it, and a light answer does not help me to forget it."

" If it was a light answer," returned Darnay, " I beg your forgive-
ness for it. I had no other object than to turn a slight thing, which,
to my surprise, seems to trouble you too much, aside. I declare to
you, on the faith of a gentleman, that I have long dismissed it from
my mind. Qood Heaven, what was there to dismiss! Have I had

494 ^ "^^^ ^f 'i^'^o Cities.

nothing more important to remember, in the great service you rendered
me that day ? "

" As to the great service," said Carton, " I am bound to avow to you,
when you speak of it in that way, that it was mere professional claptrap.
I don't know that I cared what became of you, when I rendered it.
— Mind ! I say when I rendered it ; I am speaking of the past."

" You make light of the obligation," returned Damay, " but I will
not quarrel with xjour light answer."

" Genuine truth, Mr. Damay, trust me ! I have gone aside from
my purpose; I was speaking about our being friends. Now, you
know me; you know I am incapable of all the higher and better
flights of men. If you doubt it, ask Stryver, and he'll tell you so."

" I prefer to form my own opinion, without the aid of his."

"Well! At any rate you know me as a dissolute dog, who has
never done any good, and never will."

" I don't know that you ' never will.' "

" But I do, and you must take my word for it. Well ! If you
could endure to have such a worthless fellow, and a fellow of such
indifferent reputation, coming and going at odd times, I should ask
that I might be permitted to come and go as a privileged person here ;
that I might be regarded as an useless (and I would add, if it were
not for the resemblance I detected between you and me), an unoma-
mental, piece of furniture, tolerated for its old service, and taken no
notice of. I doubt if I should abuse the permission. It is a hundred
to one if I should avail myself of it four times in a year. It would
satisfy me, I dare say, to know that I had it."

"Will you try?"

" That is another way of saying that I am placed on the footing I
have indicated. I thank you, Darnay. I may use that freedom with
your name ? "

" I think so. Carton, by this time."

They shook hands upon it, and Sydney turned away. Within a
minute afterwards, he was, to all outward appearance, as unsubstantial
as ever.

When he was gone, and in the course of an evening passed with
Miss Pross, the Doctor, and Mr. Lorry, Charles Darnay made some
mention of this conversation in general terms, and spoke of Sydney
Carton as a problem of carelessness and recklessness. He spoke of
him, in short, not bitterly or meaning to bear hard upon him, but as
anybody might who saw him as he showed himself.

He had no idea that this could dwell in the thoughts of his fair
young wife ; but, when he afterwards joined her in their own rooms,
he found her waiting for him with the old pretty lifting of the fore-
head strongly marked.

" We are thoughtful to-night ! " said Darnay, drawing his arm about
her.

"Yes, dearest Charles," with her hands on his breast, and the

Sympathy for Poor Carton. 495

inquiring and attentive expression fixed upon Lim ; " we are rather
thoughtful to-night, for wo have something on our mind to-night."

" What is it, ray Lucie ? "

" Will you promise not to press one question on me, if I beg you
not to ask it ? "

" Will 1 promise ? What will I not promise to my Love ? "

What, indeed, with his hand putting aside the golden hair from the
cheek, and his other hand against the heart that beat for him !

" I think, Charles, poor Mr. Carton deserves more consideration and
respect than you expressed for him to-night."

" Lideed, my own ? Why so ? "

" That is what you are not to ask me ? But I think — I know — he
does."

" If you know it, it is enough. What would you have me do, my
Life?"

" I would ask you, dearest, to be very generous with him always,
and very lenient on his faults when he is not by. I would ask you to
believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that
there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding."

" It is a painful reflection to me," said Charles Darnay, quite
astoimded, "that I should have done him any wrong. I never
thought this of him."

" My husband, it is so. I fear he is not to be reclaimed ; there is
scarcely a hope that anything in his character or fortunes is reparable
now. But, I am sure that he is capable of good things, gentle things,
even magnanimous things."

She looked so beautifol in the purity of her faith in this lost man,
that her husband could have looked at her as she was for hours.

" And, 0 my dearest Love ! " she urged, clinging nearer to him,
laying her head upon his breast, and raising her eyes to his, " remem-
ber how strong we are in our happiness, and how weak he is in his
misery ! "

The supplication touched him home. " I will always remember it,
dear Heart ! I wUl remember it as long as I live."

He bent over the golden head, and put the rosy lips to his, and
folded her in his arms. If one forlorn wanderer then pacing the
dark streets, could have heard her innocent disclosure, and could
have seen the drops of pity kissed away by her husband from the soft
blue eyes so loving of that husband, he might have cried to the night
— and the words would not have parted from his lips for the first
time —

" God bless her for her sweet compassion ! "

CHAPTER XXL

ECHOING FOOTSTEPS.

A WONDERFUL comei" for echoes, it has been remarked, that corner
where the Doctor lived. Ever busily winding the golden thread
which bound her husband, and her father, and herself, and her old
directress and companion, in a life of quiet bliss, Lucie sat in the still
house in the tranquilly resounding corner, listening to the echoing
footsteps of years.

At first, there were times, though she was a perfectly happy young
wife, when her work would slowly fall from her hands, and her eyes
would be dimmed. For, there was something coming in the echoes,
something light, afar off, and scarcely audible yet, that stirred her
heart too much. Fluttering hopes and doubts — hopes, of a love as
yet unknown to her : doubts, of her remaining upon earth, to enjoy
that new delight — divided her breast. Among the echoes then,
there would arise the sound of footsteps at her own early grave ;
and thoughts of the husband who would be left so desolate, and who
would mourn for her so much, swelled to her eyes, and broke like
waves.

That time passed, and her little Lucie lay on her bosom. Then,
among the advancing echoes, there was the tread of her tiny feet and
the sound of her prattling words. Let greater echoes resound as they
would, the young mother at the cradle side could always hear those
coming. They came, and the shady house was sunny with a child's
laugh, and the Divine friend of children, to whom in her trouble she
had confided hers, seemed to take her child in His arms, as He took
the child of old, and made it a sacred joy to her.

Ever busily winding the golden thread that bound them all together,
weaving the service of her happy influence through the tissue of all
their lives, and making it predominate nowhere, Lucie heard in the
echoes of years none but friendly and soothing sounds. Her husband's
step was strong and prosperous among them; her father's firm and
equal. Lo, Miss Pross, in harness of string, awakening the echoes, as
an unruly charger, whip-corrected, snorting and pawing the earth
under the plane-tree in the garden !

Even when there were sounds of sorrow among the rest, they were
not harsh nor cruel. Even when golden hair, like her own, lay in a
halo on a pillow round the worn face of a little boy, and he said, with
a radiant smile, " Dear papa and mamma, I am very sorry to leave
you both, and to leave my pretty sister ; but I am called, and I must
go ! " those were not tears all of agony that wetted his young mother's
ehoek, as the spiiit departed from her embrace that had been entrusted

Echoes. 497

to it. Suffer them and forbid them not. They see my Father's face.
O Father, blessed words !

Thus, the rustling of an Angel's wings got blended with the other
echoes, and they were not wholly of earth, but had in them that breath
of Heaven. Sighs of the winds that blew over a little garden-tomb
were mingled with them also, and both were audible to Lucie, in a
hushed murmur — like the breathing of a summer sea asleep upon a
sandy shore — as the little Lucie, comically studious at the task of the
morning, or dressing a doll at her mother's footstool, chattered in the
tongues of the Two Cities that were blended in her life.

The echoes rarely answered to the actual tread of Sydney Carton.
Some half-dozen times a year, at most, he claimed his privilege of
coming in uninvited, and would sit among them through the evening,
as ho had once done often. He never came there heated with
wine. And one other thing regarding him was whispered in the
echoes, which has been whispered by all true echoes for ages and
ages.

No man ever really lovedii woman, lost her, and knew her with a
blameless though an unchanged mind, when she was a wife and a
mother, but her children had a strange sympathy with him — an
instinctive delicacy of pity for him. What fine hidden sensibilities
are touched in such a case, no echoes tell ; but it is so, and it was so
here. Carton was the first stranger to whom little Lucie held out her
chubby arms, and he kept his place with her as she grew. The little
boy had spoken of him, almost at the last. "Poor Carton! Kiss
him for me ! "

Mr. Stryver shouldered his way through the law, like some great
engine forcing itself through turbid water, and dragged his useful
friend in his wake, like a boat towed astern. As the boat so favoured
is usually in a rough plight, and mostly under water, so, Sydney had
a swamped life of it. But, easy and strong custom, unhappily so
much easier and stronger in him than any stimulating sense of desert
or disgrace, made it the life he was to lead ; and he no more thought
of emerging from his state of lion's jackal, than any real jackal may
be supposed to think of rising to be a lion. Stryver was rich ; had
married a florid widow with property and three boys, who had nothing
particularly shining about them but the straight hair of their dumpling
heads.

These three young gentlemen, Mr. Stryver, exuding patronage ol
the most offensive quality from every pore, had walked before him
like three sheep to the quiet comer in Soho, and had offered as pupils
to Lucie's husband : delicately saying, " Halloa ! here are three
lumps of bread-and-cheese towards your matrimonial picnic, Damay ! "
The polite rejection of the three lumps of bread-and-cheese had quite
bloated Mr. Stryver with indignation, which he afterwards turned to
account in the training of the young gentlemen, by directing them to
beware of the pride of Beggai's, like that tutor-fellow. He was also

2k

49^ -A Tale of Two Cities.

in the habit of declaiming to Mrs. Stryver, over his full-bodied wiue,
on the arts Mrs. Damay had once put in practice to " catch " him,
and on the diamond-cut-diamond arts in himself, madam, which had
rendered him "not to be caught." Some of his King's Bench
familiars, who were occasionally parties to the full-bodied wiue and
the lie, excused him for the latter by saying that he had told it so
often, that he believed it himself — which is surely such an incorrigible
aggravation of an originally bad offence, as to justify any such offender's
being carried off to some suitably retired spot, and there hanged out
of the way.

These were among the echoes to which Lucie, sometimes pensive,
sometimes amused and laughing, listened in the echoing corner, until
her little daughter was six years old. How near to her heart the
echoes of her] child's tread came, and those of her own dear father's,
always active and self-possessed, and those of her dear husband's,
need not be told. Nor, how the lightest echo of their united homo,
directed by herself with such a wise and elegant thrift that it was
more abundant than any waste, was music to her. Nor, how there
were echoes all about her, sweet in her ears, of the many times her
father had told her that he found her more devoted to him married
(if that could be) than single, and of the many times her husband had
said to her that no cares and duties seemed to divide her love for him
or her help to him, and asked her " What is the magic secret, my
darling, of your being everything to all of us, as if there were only
one of us, yet never seeming to be hurried, or to have too much
to do?"

But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that rumbled
menacingly in the corner all through this space of time. And it was
now, about little Lucie's sixth birthday, that they began to have
an awful sound, as of a great storm in France with a di'eadful sea
rising.

On a night in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-
nine, Mr. Lorry came in late, from Tellson's, and sat himseK down by
Lucie and her husband in the dark window. It was a hot, wild night,
and they were all three reminded of the old Sunday night when they
had looked at the lightning from the same place.

** I began to think," said Mr. Lorry, pushing his brown wig back,
" that I should have to pass the night at Tellson's. We have been so
full of business all day, that we have not known what to do first, or
which way to turn. There is such an uneasiness in Paris, that we
have actually a run of confidence upon us ! Our customers over there,
seem not to be able to confide their property to us fast enough.
There is positively a mania among some of them for sending it to
England."

" That has a bad look," said Damay.

" A bad look, you say, my dear Darnay ? Yes, but we don't know
what reason there is in it. People ai-e so unreasonable I Some of us

The Fancy of the Footsteps. 499

at Tellson's are getting old, and wo really can't be troubled out of the
ordinary course without due occasion."

" Still," said Darnay, " you know how gloomy and threatening the
sky is."

" I know that, to be sure," assented Mr. Lorry, trying to persuade
himself that his sweet temper was soured, and that he gi-umbled, " but
I am determined to bo peevish after my long day's botheration. Where
is Manette ? "

"Here he is," said the Doctor, entering the dark room at the
moment.

" I am quite glad you are at homo ; for these hurries and fore-
bodings by which I have been surrounded all day long, have made mo
nervous without reason. You are not going out, I hope ? "

" No ; I am going to play backgammon with you, if you like," said
the Doctor.

" I don't think I do like, if I may speak my mind. I am not fit to
be pitted against you to-night. Is the teaboard still there, Lucie ? I
can't see."

" Of coui'se, it has been kept for you."

" Thank ye, my dear. The precious child is safe in bed ? "

" And sleeping soundly."

" That's right ; all safe and well ! I don't know why anything
should be othermse than safe and well here, thank God ; but I have
been so put out all day, and I am not as young as I was ! My tea,
my dear ! Thank ye. Now, come and take your place in the circle,
and let us sit quiet, and hear the echoes about which you have your
theory."

" Not a theory ; it was a fancy."

" A fancy, then, my wise pet," said Mr. Lorry, patting her hand.
*' They are very numerous and very loud, though, are they not ? Only
hear them ! "

Headlong, mad, and dangerous footsteps to force their way into
anybody's life, footsteps not easily made clean again if once stained
red, the footsteps raging in Saint Antoine afar oflF, as the little circle
sat in the dark London window.

Saint Antoine had been, that morning, a vast dusky mass of scare-
crows heaving to and fro, with frequent gleams of light above the
billowy heads, where steel blades and bayonets shone in the sun. A
tremendous roar arose from the throat of Saint Antoine, and a forest
of naked arms struggled in the air like shrivelled branches of trees in
a winter wind : all the fingers convulsively clutching at every weapon
or semblance of a weapon that was thrown up from the depths below,
no matter how far off.

Who gave them out, whence they last came, where they began,
through what agency they crookedly quivered and jerked, scores at a
time, oyer the heads of the crowd, like a kind of lightning, no eye in

500 A Tale of Two Cities,

the throng could have told ; but, muskets were being distributed — so
were cartridges, powder, and ball, bars of iron and wood, knives, axes,
pikes, every weapon that distracted ingenuity could discover or devise.
People who could lay hold of nothing else, set themselves with
bleeding hands to force stones and bricks out of their places in
walls. Every pulse and heart in Saint Antoino was on high-fever
strain and at high-fever heat. Every living creature there held life
as of no account, and was demented with a passionate readiness to
sacrifice it.

As a whirlpool of boiling waters has a centre point, so, all this
raging circled round Defarge's wine-shop, and every human drop in
the caldron had a tendency to be sucked towards the vortex where
Defargo himself, already begrimed with gunpowder and sweat, issued
orders, issued arms, thmst this man back, dragged this man forward,
disarmed one to arm another, laboured and strove in the thickest of
the uproar.

. " Keep near to me, Jacques Three," cried Defarge ; " and do you,
Jacques One and Two, separate and put yourselves at the head of as
many of these patriots as you can. Where is my wife ? "

" Eh, well ! Here you see me ! " said madame, composed as ever,
but not knitting to-day. Madame's resolute right hand was occupied
with an axe, in place of the usual softer implements, and in her girdle
were a pistol and a cruel knife.

" Where do you go, my wife ? "

" I go," said madame, " with you at present. You shall see me at
the head of women, by-and-by."

" Come, then ! " cried Defarge, in a resounding voice. " Patriots
and friends, we are ready ! The Bastille ! "

With a roar that sounded as if all the breath in France had been
shaped into the detested word, the living sea rose, wave on wave,
depth on depth, and overflowed the city to that point. Alarm-bells
ringing, drums beating, the sea raging and thundering on its new
beach, the attack begun.

Deep ditches, double drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight gi'cat
towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. Through the fire and
through the smoke — in the fire and in the smoke, for the sea cast him
up against a cannon, and on the instant he became a cannonier —
Defarge of the wine-shop worked like a manful soldier, two fierce
hours.

Deep ditch, single drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great
towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. One drawbridge down !
" Work, comrades, all, work ! Work, Jacques One, Jacques Two,
Jacques One Thousand, Jacques Two Thousand, Jacques Five-and-
Twenty Thousand ; in the name of all the Angels or the Devils —
which you prefer — work ! " Thus Defarge of the wine-shop, still at
his gun, which had long grown hot.

" To nje, wonaen ! " cried madame his wife. " What ! We can kill

One Hundred and Five, North Tower, again. 50!

as well as the men when the place is taken ! " And to her, with a
shrill thirety cry, trooping women variously armed, but all armed
alike in hunger and revenge.

Cannon, muskets, fire and smoke ; but, still the deep ditch, the
single drawbridge, the massive stone walls, and the eight great towers.
Slight displacements of the raging sea, made by the falling wounded.
Flashing weapons, blazing torches, smoking waggon-loads of wet
straw, hard work at neighbouring barricades in all directions, shrieks,
volleys, execrations, bravery without stint, boom smash and rattle,
and the furious sounding of the living sea ; but, still the deep ditch,
and the single drawbridge, and the massive stone walls, and the eight
great towers, and still Defarge of the wine-shop at his gun, grown
doubly hot by the service of Four fierce hours.

A white flag from within the fortress, and a parley — this dimly
perceptible through the raging storm, nothing audible in it — suddenly
tlie sea rose immeasurably wider and higher, and swept Defarge of the
wine-shop over the lowered drawbridge, past the massive stone outer
walls, in among the eight great towers surrendered I

So resistless was the force of the ocean bearing him on, that even
to draw his breath or turn his head was as impracticable as if he had
been struggling in the surf at the South Sea, until he was landed in
the outer court-yard of the Bastille. There, against an angle of a
wall, he made a struggle to look about him. Jacques Three was
nearly at his side ; Madame Defarge, still heading some of her women,
was visible in the inner distance, and her knife was in her hand.
Everywhere was tumult, exultation, deafening and maniacal bewilder-
ment, astounding noise, yet furious dumb-show.

"The Prisoners!"

« The Kecords ! "

« The secret cells ! "

" The instruments of torture I "

"The Prisoners!"

Of all these cries, and ■ten thousand incoherencies, " The Prisoners ! "
was the cry most taken up by the sea that rushed in, as if there were
an eternity of people, as well as of time and space. When the fore-
most billows rolled past, bearing the prison officers with them, and
threatening them all with instant death if any secret nook remained
undisclosed, Defarge laid his strong hand on the breast of one of
these men — a man with a grey head, who had a lighted torch in his
hand — separated him from the rest, and got him between himself and
the wall.

" Show me the North Tower ! " said Defarge. " Quick ! "

" I will faithfully," replied the man, " if you will come with me.
But there is no one there."

" What is the meaning of One Hundred and Five, North Tower ? "
asked Defarge. " Quick ! "

" The meaning, monsieur ? "

502 A Tale of Two Cities.

" Docs it mean a captive, or a place of captivity ? Or do you mean
that I sliall strike you dead ? "

'• Kill hiin ! " croaked Jacques Three, who had come close up.

" Monsieur, it is a cell."

« Show it mc ! "

" Pass this way, then."

Jacques Three, with his usual craving on him, and evidently dis-
appointed by the dialogue taking a turn that did not seem to promise
bloodshed, held by Defarge's arm as he held by the turnkey's. Their
three heads had been close together during this brief discourse, and it
had been as much as they could do to hear one another, even then :
so tremendous was the noise of the living ocean, in its irruption into
the Fortress, and its inundation of the courts and passages and stair-
cases. All around outside, too, it beat the walls with a deep, hoarse
roar, from which, occasionally, some partial shouts of tumult broke
and leaped into the air like spray.

Through gloomy vaults where tlie light of day had never shone,
past hideous doors of dark dens and cages, down cavernous flights of
steps, and again up steep rugged ascents of stone and brick, more like
dry waterfalls than staircases, Defarge, the turnkey, and Jacques
Three, linked hand and arm, went with all the speed they could
make. Here and there, especially at first, the inundation started on
them and swept by ; but when they had done descending, and were
winding and climbing up a tower, they were alone. Hemmed in here
by the massive thickness of walls and arches, the storm within the
fortress and without was only audible to them in a dull, subdued way,
as if the noise out of which they had come had almost destroyed their
sense of hearing.

The turnkey stopped at a low door, put a key in a clashing lock,
swung the door slowly open, and said, as they all bent their heads and
passed in :

" One hundred and five, North Tower ! "

There was a small, heavily-grated, unglazed window high in the
wall, with a stone screen before it, so that the sky could be only seen
by stooping low and looking up. There was a small chimney, heavily
barred across, a few feet within. There was a heap of old feathery
wood-ashes on the hearth. There was a stool, and table, and a straw
bed. There were the four blackened walls, and a rusted iron ring in
one of them.

" Pass that torch slowly along these walls, that I may see them,"
said Defarge to the turnkey.

The man obeyed, and Defarge followed the light closely with his
eyes.

" Stop ! — Look here, Jacques ! "

" A. M. ! " croaked Jacques Three, as he read greedily.

" Alexandre Manette," said Defarge in his ear, following the letters
with his swart forefinger, deeply engrained with gunpowder. " And

The Bastille down. 503

here he wrote ' a poor physician.' And it was he, without doubt, who
scratched a calendar on this stone. What is that in your hand ? A
crowbar ? Give it me I "

He had still the linstock of his gun in his own hand. He made a
sudden exchange of the two Instruments, and turning on the worm-
eaten stool and table, boat them to pieces in a few blows.

" Hold the light higher ! " ho said, wrathfully, to the turnkey.
"Look among those fragments with care, Jacques. And see ! Here
is my knife," throwing it to him ; " rip open that bed, and search the
straw. Hold the light higher, you ! "

With a menacing look at the turnkey he crawled upon the hearth,
and, peering up the chimney, strack and prised at its sides with the
crowbar, and worked at the iron gi*ating across it. In a few minutes,
some mortar and dust came dropping down, which he averted his faco
to avoid ; and in it, and in the old wood-ashes, and in a crevice in the
chimney into which his weapon had slipped or wrought itself, he
groped with a cautious touch.

" Nothing in the wood, and nothing in the straw, Jacques ? "

« Nothing."

"Let us collect them together, in the middle of the cell. Sol
Light them, you ! "

The turnkey fired the little pile, which blazed high and hot.
Stooping again to come out at the low-arched door, they left it burn-
ing, and retraced their way to the court-yard ; seeming to recover
their sense of hearing as they came down, until they were in the
raging flood once more.

They found it surging and tossing, in quest of Defarge himself.
Saint Antoine was clamorous to have its wine-shop keeper foremost in
the guard upon the governor who had defended the Bastille and shot
the people. Otherwise, the governor would not be marched to the
Hotel de Ville for judgment. Otherwise, the governor would escape,
and the people's blood (suddenly of some value, after many years of
worthlessness) be unavenged.

In the howling universe of passion and contention that seemed to
encompass this grim old officer conspicuous in his grey coat and red
decoration, there was but one quite steady figure, and that was a
woman's. " See, there is ray husband ! " she cried, pointing him out.
" See Defarge I " She stood immovable close to the grim old officer,
and remained immovable close to him ; remained immovable close to
him through the streets, as Defarge and the rest bore him along;
remained immovable close to him when he was got near his destina-
tion, and began to be struck at from behind ; remained immovable
close to him when the long-gathering rain of stabs and blows fell
heavy; was so close to him when he dropped dead under it, that,
suddenly animated, she put her foot upon his neck, and with her cruel
knife — long ready — hewed off his head.

The hour was come, when Saint Antoine was to execute his horrible

504 A Tate of Ttvo Cities.

idea of hoisting np men for lamps to show what he could be and do.
Saint Antoine's blood was up, and the blood of tyranny and domination
by the iron hand was down — down on the steps of the Hotel de Ville
where the governor's body lay — down on the sole of the shoe of
Madame Defarge where she had trodden on the body to steady it for
mutilation. " Lower the lamp yonder ! " cried Saint Antoine, after
glaring round for a new means of death ; " here is one of his soldiers
to be left on guard ! " The swinging sentinel was posted, and the sea
rushed on.

The sea of black and threatening waters, and of destrnctive up-
heaving of wave against wave, whose depths were yet unfathomed and
whose forces were yet unknown. The remorseless sea of tnrbulently
swaying shapes, voices of vengeance, and faces hardened in the furnaces
of suffering until the touch of pity could make no mark on them.

But, in the ocean of faces where every fierce and furious expression
was in vivid life, there were two groups of faces — each seven in
number — so fixedly contrasting with the rest, that never did sea roll
which bore more memorable wrecks with it. Seven faces of prisoners,
suddenly released by the storm that had burst their tomb, were carried
high overhead : all scared, all lost, all wondering and amazed, as if
the Last Day were come, and those who rejoiced around them were
lost spirits. Other seven faces there were, carried higher, seven dead
faces, whose drooping eyelids and half-seen eyes awaited the Last
Day. Impassive faces, yet with a suspended — not an abolished —
expression on them ; faces, rather, in a fearful pause, as having yet to
raise the dropped lids of the eyes, and bear witness with the bloodless
lips, " Thou didst it ! "

Seven prisoners released, seven gory heads on pikes, the keys of
the accursed fortress of the eight strong towers, some discovered
letters and other memorials of prisoners of old time, long dead of
broken hearts, — such, and such-like, the loudly echoing footsteps of
Saint Antoine escort through the Paris streets in mid-July, one
thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine. Now, Heaven defeat the
fancy of Lucie Damay, and keep these feet far out of her life \ For,
they are headlong, mad, and dangerous; and in the years so long
after the breaking of the cask at Defarge's wine-shop door, they are
not easily purified when once stained red.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE 8EA STILL RISES.

Haggard Saint Antoine liad had only one exultant week, in wbich to
soften his modicnm of hard and bitter bread to such extent as he
could, with the relish of fraternal embraces and congratulations, when
Madame Defargo sat at her counter, as usual, presiding over tho
customers. Madame Defarge wore no rose in her head, for the great
brotherhood of Spies had become, even in one short week, extremely
chary of trusting themselves to the saint's mercies. The lamps across
his streets had a portentously elastic swing with them.

Madame Defarge, with her arms folded, sat in the morning light
and heat, contemplating the wine-shop and the street. In both, there
were several knots of loungers, squalid and miserable, but now with a
manifest sense of power enthroned on their distress. The raggedest
nightcap, awry on the wretchedest head, had this crooked significance
in it : "I know how hard it has gi'own for me, the wearer of this, to
support life in myself; but do you know how easy it has grown for
me, the wearer of this, to destroy life in you ? " Every lean bare arm,
that had been without work before, had this work always ready for it
now, that it could strike. The fiingers of the knitting women were
vicious, with the experience that they could tear. There was a
change in the appearance of Saint Antoine ; the image had been
hammering into this for hundreds of years, and the last finishing
blows had told mightily on tho expression.

Madame Defarge sat observing it, with such suppressed approval as
was to be desired in the leader of the Saint Antoine women. One of
her sisterhood knitted beside her. The short, rather plump wife of a
starved grocer, and the mother of two children withal, this lieutenant
had already earned the complimentary name of The Vengeance.

" Hark ! " said Tho Vengeance. " Listen, then ! "Who comes ? "

As if a train of powder laid from the outeiTaost bound of the Saint
Antoine Quarter to the wine-shop door, had been suddenly fired, a
fast-spreading murmur came mshing along.

" It is Defarge," said madame. " Silence, patriots ! "

Defarge came in breathless, pulled oflf a red cap he wore, and looked
around him. " Listen, everywhere ! " said madame again. " Listen
to him ! " Defarge stood, panting, against a background of eager
eyes and open mouths, formed outside the door ; all those within tha
wine-shop had sprung to their feet.

" Say then, my husband. What is it ? "

'• News from the other world ! "

♦' How then ? " cried madame, contemptuously. *' The other world ? "

" Does everybody here recall old Foulon, who told the famished

5o6 A Tale of Two Cities.

people that they might eat grass, and who died, and went to
HeU?"

" Everybody I " from all throats.

" The news is of him. Ho is among ns ! "

" Among us ! " from tho nniversal throat again. " And dead ? "

"Not dead! He feared us so much — and with reason — that he
caused himself to be represented as dead, and had a grand mock-
funeral. But they have found him alive, hiding in the country, and
have brought him in. I have seen him but now, on his way to tho
Hotel de Ville, a prisoner. I have said that he had reason to fear us.
Say all ! Had he reason ? "

Wretched old sinner of more than threescore years and ten, if he
had never known it yet, ho would have known it in his heart of hearts
if he could have heard the answering cry.

A moment of profound silence followed. Defarge and his wife
looked steadfastly at one another. The Vengeance stooped, and tho
jar of a drum was heard as she moved it at her feet behind tho
counter.

" Patriots ! " said Defarge, in a determined voice, " are we ready ? "

Instantly Madame Defarge's knife was in her girdle; the drum
was beating in the streets, as if it and a drummer had flown together
by magic ; and The Vengeance, uttering terrific shrieks, and flinging
her arms about her head like all the forty Furies at once, was tearing
from house to house, rousing the women.

The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded anger with which
they looked fi'om windows, caught up what arms they had, and came
pouring down into the streets ; but, the women were a sight to chill
the boldest. From such household occupations as their bare poverty
yielded, from their children, from their aged and their sick crouching
on the bare ground famished and naked, they ran out with streaming
hair, urging one another, and themselves, to madness with the wildest
cries and actions. Villain Foulon taken, my sister ! Old Foulon
taken, my mother ! Miscreant Foulon taken, my daughter ! Then, a
score of others ran into the midst of these, beating their breasts, tear-
ing their hair, and screaming, Foulon alive ! Foulon who told the
starving people they might eat grass ! Foulon who told my old father
that he might cat grass, when I had no bread to give him ! Foulon
who told my baby it might suck grass, when these breasts were dry
with want ! 0 mother of God, this Foulon ! 0 Heaven, our sufioring !
Hear me, my dead baby and my withered father: I swear on my
knees, on these stones, to avenge yon on Foulon ! Husbands, and
brothers, and young men. Give us the blood of Foulon, Give us the
head of Foulon, Give ns the heart of Foulon, Give us the body and
soul of Foulon, Kend Foulon to pieces, and dig him into the ground,
that grass may grow from him ! With these cries, numbers of the
women, lashed into blind frenzy, whirled about, striking and tearing at
their own friends until they dropped into a passionate swoon, and

^

Old Fojilon. 507

were only saved by the men belonging to them from being trampled
imder foot.

Nevertheless, not a moment was lost ; not a moment ! This Foulon
was at the Hotel de Ville, and might be loosed. Never, if Saint
Antoine knew his own sufferings, insults, and wrongs ! Armed men
and women flocked out of the Quarter so fast, and drew even these
last dregs after them with such a force of suction, that within a quarter
of an hour there was not a human creature in Saint Antoine's bosom
but a few old crones and the wailing children.

No. They were all by that time choking the Hall of Examination
where this old man, ugly and wicked, was, and overflowing into the
adjacent open space and streets. The Defarges, husband and wife,
The Vengeance, and Jacques Three, were in the first press, and at no
great distance from him in the Hall.

" See ! " cried madame, pointing with her knife. " See the old
villain bound with ropes. That was well done to tie a bunch of grass
upon his back. Ha, ha! That was well done. Let him eat it
now ! " Madame put her knife under her arm, and clapped her hands
as at a play.

The people immediately behind Madame Defarge, explaining the
cause of her satisfaction to those behind them, and those again ex-
plaining to others, and those to others, the neighbouring streets
resounded with the clapping of hands. Similarly, during two or
three hours of drawl, and the winnowing of many bushels of words,
Madame Defarge's frequent expressions of impatience were taken up,
with marvellous quickness, at a distance : the more readily, because
certain men who had by some wonderful exercise of agility climbed
up the external architecture to look in from the windows, knew
Madame Defarge well, and acted as a telegraph between her and the
crowd outside the building.

At length the sun rose so high that it struck a kindly ray as of
hope or protection, directly down upon the old prisoner's head. The
favour was too much to bear ; in an instant the barrier of dust and
chaff that had stood surprisingly long, went to the winds, and Saint
Antoine had got him !

It was known directly, to the furthest confines of the crowd.
Defarge had but sprung over a railing and a table, and folded the
miserable veretch in a deadly embrace — Madame Defarge had but
followed and turned her hand in one of the ropes with which he was
tied — The Vengeance and Jacques Three were not yet up with them,
and the men at the windows had not yet swooped into the Hall, like
birds of prey from their high perches — when the cry seemed to go up,
all over the city, " Bring him out ! Bring him to the lamp ! "

Down and up, and head foremost on the steps of the building ; now,
on his knees ; now, on his feet ; now, on his back ; dragged, and
struck at, and stifled by the bunches of grass and straw that were
thrust into his face by hundreds of hands ; torn, bruised, panting,

508 A Tale of Two Cities.

bleeding, yet always entreating and beseeching for mercy ; now full
of vehement agony of action, with a small clear space about him as the
people drew one another back that they might see ; now, a log of
dead wood drawn through a forest of legs ; he was hauled to the
nearest street corner where one of the fatal lamps swung, and there
Madame Defarge let him go — as a cat might have done to a mouse —
and silently and composedly looked at him while they made ready, and
while he besought her : the women passionately screeching at him all
the time, and the men sternly calling out to have him killed witli
grass in his mouth. Once, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they
caught him shrieking ; twice, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and
they caught him shrieking ; then, the rope was merciful, and held him,
and his head was soon upon a pike, with grass enough in the moiith
for all Saint Antoine to dance at the sight of.

Nor was this the end of the day's bad work, for Saint Antoine so
shouted and danced his angry blood lap, that it boiled again, on hearing
when the day closed in that the son-in-law of the despatched, another
of the people's enemies and insulters, was coming into Paris under a
guard five hundred strong, in cavalry alone. Saint Antoine wrote his
crimes on flaring sheets of paper, seized him — would have tore iim
out of the breast of an army to bear Foulon company — set his head
and heart on pikes, and carried the three spoils of the day, in Wolf-
procession through the streets.

Not before dark night did the men and women come back to the
■ children, wailing and breadless. Then, the miserable bakers' shops
were beset by long files of them, patiently waiting to buy bad bread ;
and while they waited with stomachs faint and empty, they beguiled
the time by embracing one another on the triumphs of the day, and
achieving them again in gossip. Gradually, these strings of ragged
people shortened and frayed away ; and then poor lights began to
shine in high windows, and slender fires were made in the streets, at
which neighbours cooked in common, afterwards sujiping at their
doors.

Scanty and insufficient suppers those, and innocent of meat, as of
most other sauce to wretched bread. Yet, human fellowship infused
some nourishment into the flinty viands, and struck some sparks of
cheerfulness out of them. Fathers and mothers who had had their
full share in the worst of the day, played gently Avith tlieir meagre
children ; and lovers, with such a world around them and before them,
loved and hoped.

It was almost morning, when Defarge's wine-shop parted with its
last knot of customers, and Monsieur Defarge said to madame his
wife, in husky tones, while fastening the door :

" At last it is come, my dear ! "

" Eh well ! " returned madame. " Almost."

Saint Antoine slept, the Defarges slept : even The Vengeance slept
with her starved grocer, and the drum was at rest. The drum's was

A Ruined Country. 509

the only voice In Saint Antoino that blood and hurry had not changed.
The Vengeance, as custodian of the drum, could have wakened him up
and had the same speech out of him as before the Bastille fell, or old
Foulon was seized ; not so with the hoarse tones of the men and
women in Saint Antoine's bosom.

CHAPTER XXm.

FIRK RISES.

There was a change on the village where the fountain fell, and where
the mender of roads went forth daily to hammer out of the stones on
the highway such morsels of bread as might serve for patches to hold
his poor ignorant soul and his poor reduced body together. The
prison on the crag was not so dominant as of yore ; there were soldiers
to guard it, but not many ; there were officers to guard the soldiers,
but not one of them knew what his men would do — beyond this : that
it would probably not bo what he was ordered.

Far and wide lay a ruined country, yielding; nothing but desolation.
Every green leaf, every blade of grass and blade of grain, was as
shrivelled and poor as the miserable people. Everything was bowed
down, dejected, oppressed, and broken. Habitations, fences, domesti-
cated animals, men, women, children, and the soil that bore them —
all worn out.

Monseigneur (often a most worthy individual gentleman) was a
national blessing, gave a chivalrous tone to things, was a polite
example of luxurious and shining life, and a great deal more to equal
purpose ; nevertheless, Monseigneur as a class had, somehow or other,
brought things to this. Strange that Creation, designed expressly for
Monseigneur, should be so soon wrung dry and squeezed out ! There
must be something short-sighted in the eternal arrangements, surely !
Thus it was, however ; and the last drop of blood having been ex-
tracted from the flints, and the last screw of the rack having been
turned so often that its purchase crumbled, and it now turned and
turned with nothing to bite, Monseigneur began to run away from a
phenomenon so low and unaccountable.

But, this was not the change on the village, and on many a village
like it. For scores of years gone by, Monseigneur had squeezed it
and ^\Tung it, and had seldom graced it with his presence except for
the pleasures of the chase — now, found in hunting the people ; now,
found in hunting the beasts, for whose preservation Monseigneur made
edifying spaces of barbarous and barren wilderness. No. The change
consisted in the appearance of strange faces of low caste, rather than

510 A Tale of Two Cities.

in the disappearance of the high-caste, chiseled, and otherwise beatified
and beatifying features of Monseigneur.

For, in these times, as the mender of roads worked, solitary, in the
dust, not often troubling himself to reflect that dust he was and to
dust he must return, being for the most part too much occupied in
thinking how little he had for supper and how much more he would
eat if he had it — in these times, as he raised his eyes from his lonely
labour, and viewed the prospect, he would see some rough figure
approaching on foot, the like of which was once a rarity in those parts,
but was now a frequent presence. As it advanced, the mender of
roads would discern without surprise, that it was a shaggy-haired
man, of almost barbarian aspect, tall, in wooden shoes that were
clumsy evep to the eyes of a mender of roads, grim, rough, swart,
steeped in the mud and dust of many highways, dank with the marshy
moisture of many low grounds, sprinkled with the thorns and leaves
and moss of many by-ways through woods.

Such a man came upon him, like a ghost, at noon in the July
weather, as he sat on his heap of stones under a bank, taking such
shelter as he could get from a shower of hail.

The man looked at him, looked at the village in the hollow, at the
mill, and at the prison on the crag. When he had identified these
objects in what benighted mind he had, he said, in a dialect that was
just intelligible :

" How goes it, Jacques ? "

" All well, Jacques."

" Touch then ! "

They joined hands, and the man sat down on the heap of stones.

"No dinner?"

" Nothing but supper now," said the mender of roads, with a hungiy
face.

"It is the fashion," growled the man. "I meet no dinner any-
where,"

He took out a blackened pipe, filled it, lighted it with flint and
steel, pulled at it until it was in a bright glow : then, suddenly held
it from him and dropped something into it from between his finger
and thumb, that blazed and went out in a puff of smoke.

" Touch then." It was the turn of the mender of roads to say it
this time, after observing these operations. They again joined hands.

" To-night ? " said the mender of roads.

" To-night," said the man, putting the pipe in his mouth.

" Where ? "

« Here."

He and the mender of roads sat on the heap of stones looking
silently at one another, with the hail driving in between them like
a pigmy charge of bayonets, until the sky began to clear over the
village.

" Show me I " said the traveller tlien, moving to the brow of the hill,

The Footsore Traveller. 511

" See ! ** returned the mender of roads, with extended finger. " You
go down here, and straight through the street, and past the fountain "

"To the Devil with all that!" interrupted the other, rolling his
eye over the landscape. "2 go through no streets and past no
fountains. Well ? "

" Well ! About two leagues beyond the summit of that hill above
the village."

" Good. When do you cease to work ? "

« At sunset."

" Will you wake me, before departing ? I have walked two nights
without resting. Let me finish my pipe, and I shall sleep like a
child. Will you wake me ? "

« Surely."

The wayfarer smoked his pipe out, put it in his breast, slipped off
his great wooden shoes, and lay down on his back on the heap of
stones. He was fast asleep directly.

As the road-mender plied his dusty labour, and the hail-clouds,
rolling away, revealed bright bars and streaks of sky which were
responded to by silver gleams upon the landscape, the little man (who
wore a red cap now, in place of his blue one) seemed fascinated by the
figure on the heap of stones. His eyes were so often turned towards
it, that he used his tools mechanically, and, one would have said, to
very poor account. The bronze face, the shaggy black hair and
beard, the coarse woollen red cap, the rough medley di-ess of home-
spun stuff and hairy skins of beasts, the powerful frame attenuated by
spare living, and the sullen and desperate compression of the lips in
sleep, inspired the mender of roads with awe. The traveller had
travelled far, and his feet were footsore, and his ankles chafed and
bleeding ; his great shoes, stuffed mth leaves and grass, had been
heavy to di'ag over the many long leagues, and his clothes were chafed
into holes, as he himself was into sores. Stooping down beside him,
the road-mender tried to get a peep at secret weapons in his breast or
where not ; but, in vain, for he slept with his arms crossed upon him,
and set as resolutely as his lips. Fortified towns with their stockades,
guard-houses, gates, trenches, and drawbridges, seemed to the mender
of roads, to be so much air as against this figure. And when he lifted
his eyes from it to the horizon and looked around, he saw in his small
fency similar figures, stopped by no obstacle, tending to centres all
over France.

The man slept on, indifferent to showers of hail and intervals of
brightness, to sunshine on his face and shadow, to the pattering lumps
of dull ice on his body and the diamonds into which the sun changed
them, until the sim was low in the west, and the sky was glowing.
Then, the mender of roads, having got his tools together and all things
ready to go down into the village, roused him.

" Good ! " said the sleeper, rising on his elbow. " Two leagues
beyond the summit of the hill ? "

512 A Tale of Two Cities.

"About."

« About. Good ! "

The mender of roads went home, with the dust going on before him
according to tho set of the wind, and was soon at the fountain,
squeezing himself in among the lean kine brought there to drink, and
appearing even to whisper to them in his whispering to all the
village. When the village had taken its poor supper, it did not creep
to bod, as it usually did, but came out of doors again, and remained
there. A curious contagion of whispering was upon it, and also, when
it gathered together at the fountain in the dark, another curious
contagion of looking expectantly at the sky in one direction only.
Monsieur Gabelle, chief functionary of the place, became uneasy ;
went out on his house-top alone, and looked in that direction too;
glanced down from behind his chimneys at the darkening faces by the
fountain below, and sent word to the sacristan who kept the keys of
the church, that there might be need to ring the tocsin by-and-by.

The night deepened. The trees environing the old chateau, keeping
its solitary state apart, moved in a rising wind, as though they
threatened the pile of building massive and dark in the gloom. Up
the two terrace flights of steps the rain ran wildly, and boat at the
great door, like a swift messenger rousing those \7ithin ; uneasy rushes
of wind went through the hall, among the old spears and knives, and
passed lamenting up the stairs, and shook the curtains of the bed
where the last Marquis had slept. East, West, North, and South,
through the woods, four heavy-treading, unkempt figures crushed the
high grass and cracked the branches, striding on cautiously to como
together in the court-yard. Four lights broke out there, and moved
away in different directions, and all was black again.

But, not for long. Presently, the chateau began to make itself
strangely visible by some light of its own, as though it were growing
luminous. Then, a flickering streak played behind the architecture
of the front, picking out transparent places, and showing where balus-
trades, arches, and windows were. Then it soared higher, and grew
broader and brighter. Soon, from a score of the great windows, flames
burst forth, and the stone faces awakened, stared out of fire.

A faint murmur arose about the house from the few people who were
left there, and there was a saddling of a horse and riding away.
There was spurring and splashing through the darkness, and bridle
was drawn in the space by the village fountain, and the horse in a
foam stood at Monsieur Gabelle's door. " Help, Gal)elle I Help, every
one ! " The tocsin rang impatiently, but other help (if that were
any) there was none. The mender of roads, and two hundred and
fifty particular friends, stood with folded arms at the fountain, looking
at the pillar of fire in the sky. " It must be forty feet high," said
they, grimly ; and never moved.

The rider from the chateau, and the horse in a foam, clattered away
through the village, and galloped up the stony steep, to the prison on

Fire. 5 1 3

the crag. At the gate, a group of officers were looking at the fire ;
removed from them, a group of soldiers. " Help, gentlemen-officers t
The chateau is on fire ; valuable objects may be saved from the flames
by timely aid ! Help, help ! " , The officers looked towards the
soldiers, who looked at the fire ; gave no orders ; and answered, with
shrugs and biting of lips, " It must burn."

As the rider rattled down the hill again and through the street, the
village was illuminating. The mender of roads, and tTie two hundred
and fifty particular friends, inspired as one man and woman by the
idea of lighting up, had darted into their houses, and were putting
candles in every dull little pane of glass. The general scarcity of
everything, occasioned candles to be borrowed in a rather peremptory
manner of Monsieur Gabelle ; and in a moment of reluctance and
hesitation on that functionary's part, the mender of roads, once so
submissive to authority, had remarked that carriages were good to
make bonfires with, and that post-horses would roast.

The chateau was left to itself to flame and burn. In the roaring
and raging of the conflagration, a red-hot wind, driving straight from
the infernal regions, seemed to be blowing the edifice away. "With
the rising and falling of the blaze, the stone faces showed as if they
were in torment. "When great masses of stone and timber fell, the
face with the two dints in the nose became obscured : anon struggled
out of the smoke again, as if it were the face of the cruel Marquis,
burning at the stake and contending with the fire.

The chateau burned ; the nearest trees, laid hold of by the fire,
scorched and shrivelled ; trees at a distance, fired by the four fierce
figures, begirt the blazing edifice with a new forest of smoke. Molten
lead and iron boiled in the marble basin of the fountain ; the water
ran dry ; the extinguisher tops of the towers vanished like ice before
the heat, and trickled down into four rugged wells of flame. Great
rents and splits branched out in the solid walls, like crystallisation ;
stupified birds wheeled about and dropped into the ftirnace ; four
fierce figures trudged away, East, "West, North, and South, along tho
night-enshrouded roads, guided by the beacon they had lighted,
towards their next destination. The illuminated village had seized
hold of the tocsin, and, abolishing the lawful ringer, rang for

joy-
Not only that ; but the village, light-headed with famine, fire, and

bell-ringing, and bethinking itself that Monsieur Gabelle had to do
with the collection of rent and taxes — though it was but a small
instalment of taxes, and no rent at all, that Gabelle had got in those
latter days — became impatient for an interview with him, and, sur-
rounding his house, summoned him te come forth for personal con-
ference. "Whereupon, Monsieur Gabelle did heavily bar his door, and
retire to hold counsel with himself. The result of that conf ^ence
was, that Gabelle again withdrew himself to his house-top behind his
stack of chimneys : this time resolved, if his door were broken in (he

2l

514 -^ Tale of Tii'o Cities.

was a small Southern man of retaliative temperament), to pitch him-
self head foremost over the parapet, and crush a man or two below.

Probably, Monsieur Gabelle passed a long night up there, with the
distant chateau for fire and candle, and the beating at his door, com-
bined with the joy-ringing, for music ; not to mention his having an
ill-omened lamp slung across the road before his posting-house gate,
which the village showed a lively inclination to displace in his favour.
A trying suspense, to be passing a whole summer night on the brink
of the black ocean, ready to take that plunge into it upon which
Monsieur Gabelle had resolved ! But, the friendly dawn appearing
at last, and the rush-candles of the village guttering out, the people
happily dispersed, and Monsieui' Gabelle came down bringing his life
with him for that while.

Within a hundred miles, and in the light of other fires, there were
other functionaries less fortunate, that night and other nights, whom
the rising sun found hanging across once-peaceful streets, where they
had been born and bred ; also, there wore other villagers and towns-
people less fortunate than the mender of roads and his fellows, upon
whom the functionaries anci soldiery turned with success, and whom
they strung up in their turn. But, the fierce figures were steadily
wending East, West, North, and South, be that as it would ; and
whosoever hung, fire burned. The altitude of the gallows that would
turn to water and quench it, no functionary, by any stretch of mathe-
matics, was able to calculate successfully.

CHAPTER XXIV.

DKAWN TO THE LOADSTONE ROCK.

In such risings of fire and risings of sea — the firm earth shaken by the
inishes of an angry ocean which had now no ebb, but was always on
the flow, higher and higher, to the terror and wonder of the beholders
on the shore — three years of tempest were consumed. Three more
birthdays of little Lucie had been woven by the golden thread into
the peaceful tissue of the life of her home.

Many a night and many a day had its inmates listened to the
echoes in the corner, with hearts that failed them when they heard
the thronging feet. For, the footsteps had become to their minds as
the footsteps of a people, tumultuous under a red flag and with their
country declared in danger, changed into wild beasts, by terrible
enchantment long persisted in.

Monseigneur, as a class, had dissociated himself from the phenomenon
of his not being appreciated : of his being so little wanted in France,
as to incur considerable danger of receiving Lis dismissal from it, and

. Monseigneur' s Head-quarters in London. 515

this life together. Like the fabled rustic who raised the Devil with
infinite pains, and was so terrified at the sight of him that he could
ask the Enemy no question, but immediately fled ; so, Moneeigneur,
after boldly reading the Lord's Prayer backwards for a great number
of years, and performing many other potent spells for comijelling the
Evil One, no sooner beheld him in his terrors than he iook to his
noble heels.

The shining Bull's Eye of the Court was gone, or it would have
been the mark for a hurricane of national bullets. It had never been
a good eye to see with — had long had the mote in it of Lucifer's pride,
Sardanapalus's luxury, and a mole's blindness — but it had dropped
out and was gone. The Court, from that exclusive inner circle to its
outermost rotten ring of intrigue, conuption, and dissimulation, was
all gone together. Eoyalty was gone; had been besieged in its
Palace and " suspended," when the last tidings came over.

The August of the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two
was come, and Monseigneur was by this time scattered far and wide.

As was natural, the head-quarters and great gathering-place of
Monseigneur, in London, was Tellson's Bank. Spirits are supposed
to haunt the places where their bodies most resorted, and Monseigneur
without a guinea haunted the spot where his guineas used to be.
Moreover, it was the spot to which such French intelligence as was
most to be relied upon, came quickest. Again: Tellson's was a
munificent house, and extended great liberality to old customers who
had fallen from their high estate. Again : those nobles who had
seen the coming storm in time, and anticipating plunder or confisca-
tion, had made provident remittances to Tellson's, were always to be
heard of there by their needy brethren. To which it must be added
that every new-comer from France reported himself and his tidings
at Tellson's, almost as a matter of course. For such variety of
reasons, Tellson's was at that time, as to French intelligence, a kind
of High Exchange ; and this was so well known to the public, and
the inquiries made there were in consequence so numerous, that
Tellson's sometimes wrote the latest news out in a line or so and
posted it in the Bank windows, for all who ran through Temple Bar
to read.

On a steaming, misty afternoon, Mr. Lorry sat at his desk, and
Charles Darnay stood leaning on it, talking with him in a low voice.
The penitential den once set apart for interviews with the House, was
now the news-Exchange, and was filled to overflowing. It was within
half an hour or so of the time of closing.

"But, although you are the youngest man that ever lived," said
Charles Darnay, rather hesitating, " I must still suggest to you "

" I understand. That I am too old ? " said Mr. Lorry.

" Unsettled weather, a long journey, uncertain means of travelling,
a disorganised countiy, a city that may not be even safe for you."

" My dear Charles," said Mr. Lorry, with cheerful confidence, " you

5i6 A Tale of Two Cities.

touch some of the reasons for my going : not for my staying away.
It is safe enough for me ; nobody will care to interfere with an old
fellow of hard upon fourscore when there are so many people there
much better worth interfering with. As to its being a disorganised
city, if it were not a disorganised city there would be no occasion to
send somebody from our House here to our House there, who knows
the city and the business, of old, and is in Tellson's confidence. As
to the uncertain travelling, the long journey, and the winter weather,
if I were not prepared to submit myself to a few inconveniences for
the sake of Tellson's, after all these years, who ought to be ? "

" I wish I were going myself," said Charles Darnay, somewhat
restlessly, and like one thinking aloud.

" Indeed ! You are a pretty fellow to object and advise ! " exclaimed
Mr. Lorry. "You wish you were going yourself? And you a
Frenchman born ? You are a Avise counsellor."

" My dear Mr. Lorry, it is because I am a Frenchman born, that
the thought (which I did not mean to utter here, however) has passed
through my mind often. One cannot help thinking, having had some
sympathy for the miserable people, and having abandoned something
to them," he spoke here in his former thoughtful manner, " that one
might be listened to, and might have the power to persuade to some
restraint. Only last night, after you had left us, when I was talking
to Lucie "

" When you were talking to Lucie," Mr. Lorry repeated. " Yes.
I wonder you are not ashamed to mention the name of Lucie ! Wishing
you were going to France at this time of day ! "

'• However, I am not going," said Charles Darnay, with a smile.
" It is more to the purpose that you say you are."

" And I am, in plain reality. The truth is, my dear Charles," Mr.
Lorry glanced at the distant House, and lowered his voice, " you can
have no conception of the difficulty with which our business is trans-
acted, and of the peril in which our books and papers over yonder are
involved. The Lord above knows what the compromising conse-
quences would be to numbers of people, if some of our documents
were seized or destroyed ; and they might be, at any time, you know,
for who can say that Paris is not set afire to-day, or sacked to-morrow !
Now, a judicious selection from these with the least possible delay,
and the burying of them, or otherwise getting of them out of harm's
way, is within the power (without loss of precious time) of scarcely
anyone but myself, if any one. And shall I hang back, when
Tellson's knows this and says this — Tellson's, whose bread I have
eaten these sixty years — because I am a little stiff about the joints ?
Why, I am a boy, sir, to half-a-dozen old codgers here ! "

" How I admire the gallantry of your youthful spii-it, Mr. Lorry."

"Tut! Nonsense, sir! — And, my dear Charles," said Mr, Lorry,
glancing at the House again, "you are to remember, that getting
things out of Paris at this present time, no matter what things, is

Mr. Lorry lays his Plans. 517

next to an impossibility. Papers and precious matters were this very
day brouglit to us here (I speak in strict confidence ; it is not business-
like to whisper it, even to you), by the strangest bearers you can
imagine, every one of whom had his head hanging on by a single hair
as he passed the Barriers. At another time, our parcels would come
and go, as easily as in business-like Old England ; but now, every-
thing is stopped."

" And do you really go to-night ? "

"I really go to-night, for the case has become too pressing to
admit of delay."

" And do you take no one with you ? "

" All sorts of people have been proposed to me, but I will have
nothing to say to any of them, I intend to take Jerry. Jerry has
been my body-guard on Sunday nights for a long time past, and I am
used to him. Nobody will suspect Jerry of being anything but an
English bull-dog, or of having any design in his head but to fly at
anybody who touches his master."

" I must say again that I heartily admire your gallantry and youth-
fulness."

" I must say again, nonsense, nonsense ! When I have executed
this little commission, I shall, perhaps, accept Tellson's proposal to
retire and live at my ease. Time enough, then, to think about grow-
ing old."

This dialogue had taken place at Mr. Lorry's usual desk, with
Monseigneur swarming within a yard or two of it, boastful of what
he would do to avenge himself on the rascal-people before long. It
was too much the way of Monseigneur under his reverses as a refugee,
and it was much too much the way of native British orthodoxy, to
talk of this terrible Eevolution as if it were the one only harvest ever
known imder the skies that had not been sown — as if nothing had
ever been done, or omitted to be done, that had led to it — as if
observers of the wretched millions in France, and of the misused and
perverted resources that should have made them prosperous, had not
seen it inevitably coming, years before, and had not in plain words
recorded what they saw. Such vapouring, combined with the ex-
travagant plots of Monseigneur for the restoration of a state of things
that had utterly exliausted itself, and worn out Heaven and earth as
well as itself, was hard to be endured without some remonstrance by
any sane man who knew the truth. And it was such vapouring all
about his ears, like a troublesome confusion of blood in his own head,
added to a latent uneasiness in his mind, which had already made
Charles Darnay restless, and which still kept him so.

Among the talkers, was Stryver, of the King's Bench Bar, far on
his way to state promotion, and, therefore, loud on the theme : broach-
ing to Monseigneur, his devices for blowing the people up and
exterminating them from the face of the earth, and doing without
them : and for accomplishing many similar objects akin in their

5i8 A Tale of Two Cities.

nature to the abolition of eagles by sprinkling salt on the tails of the
race. Him, Daruay heard with a particular feeling of objection ; and
Darnay stood divided between going away that he might hear no
more, and remaining to interpose his word, when the thing that was
to be, went on to shape itself out.

The House approached Mr. Lorry, and laying a soiled and unopened
letter before him, asked if ho had yet discovered any traces of the
person to whom it was addressed '? The House laid the letter down
so close to Darnay that he saw the direction — the more quickly
because it was his own right name. The address, turned into English,
ran :

" Very pressing. To Monsieur heretofore the Marquis St. Evre-
monde, of France. Confided to the cares of Messrs. Tellson and Co.,
Bankers, London, England."

On the marriage morning, Dr. Manette had made it his one urgent
and express request to Charles Darnay, that the secret of this name
should be — unless he, the Doctor, dissolved the obligation — kept
inviolate between them. Nobody else knew it to be his name ; his
own wife had no suspicion of the fact ; Mr. Lorry could have none.

" No," said Mr. Lorry, in reply to the House ; " I have referred it,
I think, to everybody now here, and no one can tell me where this
gentleman is to be found."

Tho hands of the clock verging upon the hour of closing the Bank,
thera was a general set of the current of talkers past Mr. Lorry's
desk He held the letter out inquiringly ; and Monseigneur looked
at it, in the person of this plotting and indignant refugee ; and Mon-
seigneur looked at it, in the person of that plotting and indignant
refugee ; and This, That, and The Other, all had something dis-
paraging to say, in French or in English, concerning the Marquis
who was not to be found.

" Nephew, I believe — but in any case degenerate successor — of the
polished Marquis who was murdered," said one. " Happy to say, I
never knew him."

" A craven who abandoned his post," said another — this Mon-
seigneur had been got out of Paris, legs uppermost and half suffocated,
in a load of hay — " some years ago."

" Infected with the new doctrines," said a third, eyeing the direction
through his glass in passing ; " set himself in opposition to the last
Marquis, abandoned the estates when he inherited them, and left them
to the ruffian herd. They will recompense him now, I hope, as he
deserves."

" Hey ? " cried the blatant Stryver. " Did he though ? Is that
the sort of follow ? Let us look at his infamous name. D — n the
fellow ! "

Darnay, unable to restrain himself any longer, touched Mr. Stryver
on the shoulder, and said •

" I know the fellow."

Mr. Stryver's Sneers. 519

" Do you, by Jupiter ? " said Stry ver. " I am sorry for it."

"Why?"

"Why, Mr. Darnay? D'ye hoar what he did? Don't ask, why,
in these times."

"But I do ask why?"

" Then I tell you again, Mr. Darnay, I am sorry for it. I am sorry
to hear you putting any such extraordinary questions. Here is a
fellow, who, infected by the most pestilent and blasphemous code of
devilry that ever was known, abandoned his property to the vilest
scum of the earth that ever did murder by wholesale, and you ask mo
why I am sorry that a man who instructs youth knows him ? Well,
but I'll answer you. I am sorry because I believe there is contamina-
tion in such a scoundi-el. That's why."

Mindful of the secret, Darnay with great difficulty checked him-
self, and said : " You may not understand the gentleman."

" I understand how to put yov, in a comer, Mr. Darnay," said Bully
Stryvcr, " and I'll do it. If this fellow is a gentleman, I donH under-
stand him. You may tell him so, with my compliments. You may
also tell him, from me, that after abandoning his worldly goods and
position to this biitcherly mob, I wonder he is not at the head of
them. But, no, gentlemen," said Stryver, looking all round, and snap-
ping his fingers, " I know something of human nature, and I tell you
that you'll never find a fellow like this fellow, trusting himself to the
mercies of such precious proteges. No, gentlemen ; he'll always show
'em a clean pair of heels very early in the scuffle, and sneak away "

With those words, and a final snap of his fingers, Mr. Stryver
shouldered himself into Fleet Street, amidst the general approbation
of his hearers. Mr. Lorry and Charles Darnay were left alone at tho
desk, in the general departure from the Bank.

"Will you take charge of the letter?" said Mr. Lorry. "You
know where to deliver it ? "

« I do."

" Will you undertake to explain, that we suppose it to have been
addressed here, on the chance of our knowing where to forward it, and
that it has been here some time ? "

" I will do so. Do you start for Paris from here ? "

" From here, at eight."

" I will come back, to see you off."

Very ill at ease with himself, and with Stryver and most other men,
Damay made the best of his way into the quiet of the Temple, opened
the letter, and read it. These were its contents :

" Prison of the Abbayo, Paris.
"Jime21, 1792.
"Monsieur heretopoee the Marquis.
" After having long been in danger of my life at tho hands of the
village, I have been seized, with great violence and indignity, and

520 A Tale of Two Cities.

brought a long journey on foot to Paris. On the road I have suffered
a great deal. Nor is that all ; my house has been destroyed — razed
to the ground.

"The crime for which I am imprisoned, Monsieur heretofore the
Marquis, and for which I shall be summoned before the tribunal, and
shall lose my life (without your so generous help), is, they tell me,
treason against the majesty of the people, in that I have acted against
them for an emigrant. It is in vain I represent that I have acted for
them, and not against, according to your commands. It is in vain
I represent that, before the sequestration of emigrant property, I had
remitted the imposts they had ceased to pay ; that I had collected no
rent ; that I had had recourse to no process. The only response is,
that I have acted for an emigrant, and where is that emigrant ?

" Ah ! most gracious Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, where is
that emigrant ? I cry in my sleep, where is he ? I demand of Heaven,
will he not come to deliver me ? No answer. Ah, Monsieur hereto-
fore the Marquis, I send my desolate cry across the sea, hoping it may
perhaps reach your ears through the great bank of Tilson known at
Paris !

" For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the honour of
your noble name, I supplicate you, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis,
to succour and release me. My fault is, that I have been true to you.
Oh, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, I pray you be you true to me !

" From this prison here of horror, whence I every hour tend nearer
and nearer to destruction, I send you, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis,
the assurance of my dolorous and unhappy service.

" Your afflicted,

" Gabelle."

The latent uneasiness in Damay's mind was roused to vigorous life
by this letter. The peril of an old servant and a good one, whose
only crime was fidelity to himself and his family, stared him so
reproachfully in the face, that, as he walked to and fro in the Temple
considering what to do, he almost hid his face from the passers-by.

He knew very well, that in his horror of the deed which had
culminated the bad deeds and bad reputation of the old family house,
in his resentful suspicions of his uncle, and in the aversion with
which his conscience regarded the crumbling fabric that he was
supposed to uphold, he had acted imperfectly. He knew very well,
that in his love for Lucie, his renunciation of his social place, though
by no means new to his own mind, had been hurried and incomplete.
He knew that he ought to have systematically worked it out and
supervised it, and that he had meant to do it, and that it had never
been done.

The happiness of his own chosen English home, the necessity of
being always actively employed, the swift changes and troubles of the
time which had followed on one another so fast, that the events of this

Charles Darnay drawn towards Paris. 521

week annihilated the immature plans of last week, and the events of
the week following made all new again ; he knew very well, that to the
force of these circumstances he had yielded : — not without disquiet,
but still without continuous and accumulating resistance. That he had
watched the times for a time of action, and that they had shifted and
struggled until the time had gone by, and the nobility were trooping
from France by every highway and by-way, and their property was
in course of confiscation and destruction, and their very names were
blotting out, was as well known to himself as it could be to any new
authority in France that might impeach him for it.

But, he had oppressed no man, he had imprisoned no man ; ho was
BO far from having harshly exacted payment of his dues, that he had
relinquished them of his own will, thrown himself on a world with no
favour in it, won his own private place there, and earned his own
bread. Monsieur Gabelle had held the impoverished and involved
estate on written instructions, to spare the people, to give them what
little there was to give — such fuel as the heavy creditors would let
them have in the winter, and such produce as could be saved from the
same grip in the summer — and no doubt he had put the fact in plea
and proof, for his own safety, so that it could not but appear now.

This favoured the desperate resolution Charles Darnay had begun
to make, that he would go to Paris.

Yes. Like the mariner in the old story, the winds and streams had
driven him within the influence of the Loadstone Rock, and it was
drawing him to itself, and he must go. Everything that arose before
his mind drifted him on, faster and faster, more and more steadily, to
the terrible attraction. His latent uneasiness had been, that bad aims
were being worked out in his own unhappy land by bad instruments,
and that he who could not fail to know that he was better than they,
was not there, trying to do something to stay bloodshed, and assert
the claims of mercy and humanity. With this uneasiness half stifled,
and half reproaching him, he had been brought to the pointed com-
parison of himseK with the brave old gentleman in whom duty was so
strong; upon that comparison (injurious to himself) had instantly
followed the sneers of Monseigneur, which had stung him bitterly, and
those of Stryver, which above all were coarse and galling, for old
reasons. Upon those, had followed Gabelle's letter : the appeal of an
innocent prisoner, in danger of death, to his justice, honour, and good
name.

His resolution was made. He must go to Paris.

Yes. The Loadstone Eock was drawing him, and he must sail on,
until he struck. He knew of no rock; he saw hardly any danger.
The intention with which he had done what ho had done, even
although he had left it incomplete, presented it before him in an
aspect that would be gratefully acknowledged in France on his pre-
senting himself to assert it. Then, that glorious vision of doing good,
which is so often the sanguine mii'agc of so many good minds, arose

522 A Tale of Two Cities^

before him, and ho even saw himself in tho illusion with some
influence to guide this raging Revolution that was running so fearfully
wild.

As he walked to and fro with his resolution made, he considered
that neither Lucie nor her father must know of it until he was gone.
Lucie should be spared the pain of separation ; and her father, always
reluctant to turn his thoughts towards the dangerous ground of old,
should come to the knowledge of the step, as a step taken, and not in
the balance of suspense and doubt. How much of the incompleteness
of his situation was referable to her father, through the painful
anxiety to avoid reviving old associations of France in his mind, he
did not discuss with himself. But, that circumstance too, had had its
influence in his course.

He walked to and fro, with thoughts very busy, until it was time
to return to Tellson's and take leave of Mr. Lorry. As soon as ho
arrived in Paris he would present himself to this old friend, but he
must say nothing of his intention now.

A carriage with post-horses was ready at the Bank door, and Jerry
was booted and equipped.

" I have delivered that letter," said Charles Darnay to Mr. Lorry.
" I would not consent to your being charged with any written answer,
but perhaps you will take a verbal one ? "

" That I will, and readily," said Mr. Lorry, " if it is not dangerous."

" Not at all. Though it is to a prisoner in the Abbaye."

" What is his name ? " said Mr. Lorry, with his open pocket-book
in his hand.

" Gabelle."

" Gabelle. And what is the message to the unfortunate Gabelle in
prison ? "

" Simply, ' that he has received the letter, and will come.* "

" Any time mentioned ? "

•' He will start upon his journey to-morrow night."

" Any person mentioned ? "

« No."

He helped Mr. Lorry to wrap himself in a number of coats and
cloaks, and went out with him from the warm atmosphere of the old
Bank, into the misty air of Fleet Street. " My love to Lucie, and to
little Lucie," said Mr. Lorry at parting, " and take precious care of
them till I come back." Charles Darnay shook his head and doubt-
fully smiled, as the carriage rolled away.

That night — it was the fourteenth of August — he sat up late, and
wrote two fervent letters ; one was to Lucie, explaining the strong
obligation he was under to go to Paris, and showing her, at length,
the reasons that he had, for feeling confident that he could become
involved in no personal danger there ; the other was to the Doctor,
confiding Lucie and their dear child to his care, and dwelling on the
same topics with the strongest assurances. To both, he wrote that

TJie Loadstone Rock. 523

to would despatch letters in proof of his safety, immediately after
his arrival.

It was a hard day, that day of being among them, with the first
reservation of their joint lives on his mind. It was a hard matter to
preserve the innocent deceit of which they were profoundly unsus-
picious. But, an affectionate glance at his wife, so happy and busy,
made him resolute not to tell her what impended (he had been half
moved to do it, so strange it was to him to act in anything without
her quiet aid), and the day passed quickly. Early in the evening he
embraced her, and her scarcely less dear namesake, pretending that
he would return by-and-by (an imaginary engagement took him out,
and he had secreted a valise of clothes ready), and so he emerged into
the heavy mist of the heavy streets, with a heavier heart.

The unseen force was drawing him fast to itself, now, and all the
tides and winds were setting straight and strong towards it. He left
his two letters with a trusty porter, to be delivered half an hour before
midnight, and no sooner; took horse for Dover; and began his
journey. " For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the
honour of your noble name ! " was the poor prisoner's cry wdth which
he strengthened his sinking heart, as he left all that was dear on
earth behind him, and floated away for the Loadstone Rock.

THE END OF THE SECOND BOOK.

BOOK THE THIRD. THE TRACK OF A STORM.

CHAPTER I.

IN SECRET.

The traveller tared slowly on his way, who fared towards Paris from
England in the autumn of the year one thousand seven hundred and
ninety-two. More than enough of bad roads, bad equipages, and bad
horses, he would have encountered to delay him, though the fallen
and unfortunate King of France had been upon his throne in all his
glory ; but, the changed times were fraught with other obstacles than
these. Every town-gate and village taxing-house had its band of
citizen-patriots, with their national muskets in a most explosive state
of readiness, who stopped all comers and goers, cross-questioned them,
inspected their papers, looked for their names in lists of their own,
turned them back, or sent them on, or stopped them and laid them in
hold, as their capricious judgment or fancy deemed best for the dawn-
ing Eepublic One and Indivisible, of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or
Death.

A very few French leagues of his journey were accomplished, when
Charles Darnay began to perceive that for him along these country
roads there was no hope of return until he should have been declared
a good citizen at Paris. Whatever might befall now, he must on to
his journey's end. Not a mean village closed upon him, not a common
barrier dropped across the road behind him, but he knew it to be
another iron door in the series that was barred between him and
England. The universal watchfulness so encompassed him, that if he
had been taken in a net, or were being forwarded to his destination in
a cage, he could not have felt his freedom more completely gone.

This universal watchfulness not only stopped him on the highway
twenty times in a stage, but retarded his progress twenty times in a
day, by riding after him and taking him back, riding before him and
stopping him by anticipation, riding with him and keeping him in
charge. He had been days upon his journey in France alone, when

The Emigrant suspected. 525

he went to bed tired out, in a little town on the high-road, still a long
way from Paris.

Nothing bm the production of the aflflicted Gabelle's letter from his
prison of the Abbaye would have got him on so far. His difficulty at
the guard-house in this small place had been such, that he felt his
journey to have come to a crisis. And he was, therefore, as little
surprised as a man could be, to find himself awakened at the small
inn to which he had been remitted until morning, in the middle of the
night.

Awakened by a timid local functionary and three armed patriots in
rough red caps and with pipes in their mouths, who sat down on the
bed.

" Emigrant," said the functionary, " I am going to send you on to
Paris, under an escort."

" Citizen, I desire nothing more than to get to Paris, though I could
dispense with the escort."

" Silence ! " growled a red-cap, striking at the coverlet with the butt-
end of his musket. " Peace, aristocrat ! "

" It is as the good patriot says," observed the timid functionary.
" You are an aristocrat, and must have an escort— and must pay for
it."

" I have no choice," said Charles Darnay.

" Choice ! Listen to him ! " cried the same scowling red-cap. " As
if it was not a favour to bo protected from the lamp-iron ! "

" It is always as the good patriot says," observed the functionary.
" Rise and dress yourself, emigrant."

Darnay complied, and was taken back to the guard-house, where
other patriots in rough red caps were smoking, drinking, and sleeping,
by a watch-fire. Here ho paid a heavy price for his escort, and hence
he started with it on the wet, wet roads at three o'clock in the morning.

The escort were two mounted patriots in red caps and tricoloured
cockades, armed with national muskets and sabres, who rode one on
either side of him. The escorted governed his own horse, but a loose
line was attached to his bridle, the end of which one of the patriots
kept girded round his wrist. In this state they set forth with the
sharp rain driving in their faces : clattering at a heavy dragoon trot
over the uneven town pavement, and out upon the mire-deep roads.
In this state they traversed without change, except of horses and pace,
all the mire-deep leagues that lay between them and the capital.

They travelled in the night, halting an hour or two after daybreak,
and lying by until the twilight fell. The escort were so wretchedly
clothed, that they twisted straw round their bare legs, and thatched
their ragged shoulders to keep the wet off". Apart from the personal
discomfort of being so attended, and apart from such considerations
of present danger as arose from one of the patriots being chronically
di-unk, and carrying his musket very recklessly, Charles Darnay did
jiot allow the restraint that was laid upon him to awaken any serious

526 A Tale of Two Cities.

fears in his breast ; for, he reasoned with himself that it could have
no reference to the merits of an individual case that was not yet stated,
and of representations, confirmable by the prisoner in the Abbayo,
that were not yet made.

But when they came to the town of Beauvais — which they did at
eventide, when the streets were filled with people — he could not con-
ceal from himself that the aspect of affairs was very alarming. An
ominous crowd gathered to see him dismount at the posting-yard, and
many voices called out loudly, " Down with the emigrant ! "

He stopped in the act of swinging himself out of his saddle, and,
resuming it as his safest place, said :

" Emigrant, my friends ! Do you not see me here, in France, of my
own will ? "

" You are a cursed emigrant," cried a farrier, making at him in a
furious manner through the press, hammer in hand ; " and you are a
cursed aristocrat ! "

The postmaster interposed himself between this man and the rider's
bridle (at which he was evidently making), and soothingly said, " Let
him be ; let him be ! Ho will be judged at Paris."

" Judged ! " repeated the farrier, swinging his hammer. " Ay ! and
condemned as a traitor." At this the crowd roared approval.

Checking the postmaster, who was for turning his horse's head to
the yard (the drunken patriot sat composedly in his saddle looking on,
with the line round his wrist), Damay said, as soon as he could make
his voice heard :

" Friends, you deceive yourselves, or you are deceived. I am not
a traitor."

" He lies ! " cried the smith. " He is a traitor since the decree.
His life is forfeit to the people. His cursed life is not his own ! "

At the instant when Darnay saw a rush in the eyes of the crowd,
which another instant would have brought upon him, the postmaster
turned his horse into the yard, the escort rode in close upon his horse's
flanks, and the postmaster shut and barred the crazy double gates.
The farrier struck a blow upon them with his hammer, and the crowd
groaned ; but, no more was done.

" What is this decree that the smith spoke of ? " Darnay asked the
postmaster, when he had thanked him, and stood beside him in the yard.
" Truly, a decree for selling the property of emigrants."
" When passed ? "
" On the fourteenth."
" The day I left EngUnd ! "

"Everybody says it is but one of several, and that there will be
others — if there are not already — banishing all emigrants, and con-
demning all to death who return. That is what he meant when he
said your life was not your own."

" But there are no such decrees yet ? "

" What do I know ! " said the postmaster, shrugging his shoulders ;

Arrival at Paris. 527

" there may be, or there will be. It is all the same. What would
you have ? "

They rested on some straw in a loft until the middle of the night,
and then rode forward again when all the town was asleep. AraoDg
the many wild changes observable on familiar things which made this
wild ride unreal, not the least was the seeming rarity of sleep. After
long and lonely spurring over dreary roads, they would come to a
cluster of poor cottages, not steeped in darkness, but all glittering
with lights, and would find the people, in a ghostly manner in the
dead of the night, circling hand in hand round a shrivelled tree of
Liberty, or all drawn up together singing a Liberty song. Happily,
however, there was sleep in Beauvais that night to help them out of
it, and they passed on once more into solitude and loneliness : jingling
through the untimely cold and wet, among impoverished fields that
had yielded no fruits of the earth that year, diversified by the blackened
remains of burnt houses, and by the sudden emergence from ambus-
cade, and sharp reining up across their way, of patriot patrols on the
watch on all the roads.

Daylight at last found them before the wall of Paris. The barrier
was closed and strongly guarded when they rode up to it.

" Where are the papers of this prisoner ? " demanded a resolute-
looking man in authority, who was summoned out by the guard.

Naturally struck by the disagreeable word, Charles Darnay re-
quested the speaker to take notice that he was a free traveller and
French citizen, in charge of an escort which the disturbed state of the
country had imposed upon him, and which he had paid for.

" Where," repeated the same personage, without taking any heed of
him whatever, " are the papers of this prisoner ? "

The drunken patriot had them in his cap, and produced them.
Casting his eyes over Gabelle's letter, the same personage in authority
showed some disorder and surprise, and looked at Darnay with a close
attention.

He left escort and escorted without saying a word, however, and
went into the guard-room ; meanwhile, they sat upon their horses
outside the gate. Looking about him while in this state of suspense,
Charles Darnay observed that the gate was held by a mixed guard of
soldiers and patriots, the latter far outnumbering the former ; and that
while ingress into the city for peasants' carts bringing in supplies, and
for similar traffic and traffickers, was easy enough, egress, even for the
homeliest people, was very difficult. A numerous medley of men and
women, not to mention beasts and vehicles of various sorts, was wait-
ing to issue forth ; but, the previous identification was so strict, that
they filtered through the barrier very slowly. Some of these people
knew their turn for examination to be so far ofi^, that they lay down
on the ground to sleep or smoke, while others talked together, or
loitered about. The red cap and tricolour cockade were imiver-sal,
both among men and women.

528 A Tale of Two Cities.

When he had sat in his saddle some half-hour, taking note of these
things, Darnay found himself confronted by the same man in authority,
who directed the guard to open the barrier. Then he delivered to the
escort, drunk and sober, a receipt for the escorted, and requested him
to dismount. He did so, and the two patriots, leading his tired horse,
turned and rode away without entering the city.

He accompanied his conductor into a guard-room, smelling of
common wine and tobacco, where certain soldiers and patriots, asleep
and awake, drunk and sober, and in various neutral states between
sleeping and waking, drunkenness and sobriety, were standing and
lying about. The light in the guard-house, half derived from the
waning oil-lamps of the night, and half from the overcast day, was in
a correspondingly uncertain condition. Some registers were lying
open on a desk, and an ofl&cer of a coarse, dark aspect, presided over
these.

" Citizen Defarge," said he to Darnay's conductor, as he took a slip
of paper to write on. " Is this the emigrant Evremonde ? "

« This is the man."

" Your age, Evremonde ? "

" Thirty-seven."

" Married, Evremonde ? "

"Yes."

" Where married ? **

« In England."

" Without doubt. Whore is your wife, Evremonde ? "

" In England."

" Without doubt. You are consigned, Evremonde, to the prison of
La Force."

" Just Heaven ! " exclaimed Darnay. " Under what law, and for
what offence ? "

The officer looked up from his slip of paper for a moment.

" We have new laws, Evremonde, and new offences, since you were
here." He said it with a hard smile, and went on writing.

" I entreat you to observe that I have come here voluntarily, in
response to that written appeal of a fellow-countryman which lies
before you. I demand no more than the opportunity to do so without
delay. Is not that my right ? "

"Emigrants have no rights, Evremonde," was the stolid reply.
The officer wrote until he had finished, read over to himself what he
had written, sanded it, and handed it to Defarge, with the words " In
secret."

Defarge motioned with the paper to the prisoner that he must
accompany him. The prisoner obeyed, and a guard of two armed
patriots attended them.

" Is it you," said Defarge, in a low voice, as they went down the
guard-house steps and turned into Paris, " who married the daughter
of Doctor Manette, once a prisoner in the Bastille that is no more ? "

Consigned to Prison. 529

" Yes," replied Darnay, looking at him with surprise.

" My name is Defarge, and I keep a wine-shop in the Quarter Saint
Antoine. Possibly you have heard of me."

" My wife came to your house to reclaim her father ? Yes ! "

The word " wife " seemed to serve as a gloomy reminder to Defarge,
to say with sudden impatience, " In the name of that sharp female
newly-born, and called La Guillotine, why did you come to
France?"

" You heard me say why, a minute ago. Do you not believe it is
the truth ? "

" A bad truth for you," said Defarge, speaking with knitted brows,
and looking straight before him.

" Indeed I am lost here. All here is so unprecedented, so changed,
so sudden and unfair, that I am absolutely lost. WiU you render me
a little help?"

" None." Defarge spoke, always looking straight before him.

" Will you answer me a single question ? "

" Perhaps. According to its nature. You can say what it is."

" In this prison that I am going to so unjustly, shall I have some
free communication with the world outside ? "

" You will see."

" I am not to be buried there, prejudged, and without any means of
presenting my case ? "

"You will see. But, what then ? Other people have been similarly
buried in worse prisons, before now."

" But never by me, Citizen Defarge."

Defarge glanced darkly at him for answer, and walked on in a
steady and set silence. The deeper he sank into this silence, the
fainter hope there was — or so Darnay thought — of his softening in
any slight degree. He, therefore, made haste to say :

" It is of the utmost importance to me (you know, Citizen, even
better than I, of how much importance), that I should be able to
communicate to Mr. Lorry of Tellson's Bank, an English gentleman
who is now in Paris, the simple fact, without comment, that I have
been thrown into the prison of La Force. Will you cause that to be
done for me ? "

"Iwill do," Defarge doggedly rejoined, "nothing for you. My
duty is to my country and the People. I am the sworn servant of
both, against you. I wiU do nothing for you."

Charles Darnay felt it hopeless to entreat him further, and his pride
was touched besides. As they walked on in silence, he could not but
see how used the people were to the spectacle of prisoners passing
along the streets. The very children scarcely noticed him. A few
passers turned their heads, and a few shook their fingers at him as an
aristocrat ; otherwise, that a man in good clothes should be going to
prison, was no more remarkable than that a labourer in working
clothes should be going to work. In one narrow, dark, and dirty

2m

530 A Tale of Two Cities.

street tbrougli wbich they passed, an excited orator, mounted on a
stool, was addressing an excited audience on tlie crimes against the
people, of the king and the royal family. The few words that he
caught from this man's lips, first made it known to Charles Darnay
that the king was in prison, and that the foreign ambassadors had one
and all left Paris. On the road (except at Beauvais) ho had heard
absolutely nothing. The escort and the univfersal watchfulness had
completely isolated him.

That he had fallen among far greater dangers than those which had
developed themselves when he left England, he of course knew now.
That perils had thickened about him fast, and might thicken faster
and faster yet, he of course knev/ now. He could not but admit to
himself that he might not have made this journey, if he could have
foreseen the events of a few days. And yet his misgivings were not
so dark as, imagined by the light of this later time, they would appear.
Troubled as the future was, it was the unknown future, and in its
obscurity there was ignorant hope. The horrible massacre, days and
nights long, which, within a few rounds of the clock, was to set a
great mark of blood upon the blessed garnering time of harvest, was
as far out of his knowledge as if it had been a hundred thousand years
away. The " sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine,"
was hardly known to him, or to the generality of people, by name.
The frightful deeds that were to be soon done, were probably uu-
imagined at that time in the brains of the doers. How could they
have a place in the shadowy conceptions of a gentle mind ?

Of unjust treatment in detention and hardship, and in cruel separa-
tion from his wife and child, he foreshadowed the likelihood, or the
certainty; but, beyond this, he dreaded nothing distinctly. Witli
this on his mind, which was enough to carry into a dreary prison
court-yard, he arrived at the prison of La Force.

A man with a bloated face opened the strong wicket, to whom
Dcfarge presented " The Emigrant Evremonde."

" What the Devil ! How many more of them ! " exclaimed the man
with the bloated face.

Defarge took his receipt without noticing the exclamation, and
withdrew, with his two fellow-patriots.

" What the Devil, I say again 1 " exclaimed the gaoler, left with his-
wife. " How many more ! "

The gaoler's wife, being provided with no answer to the question,
merely replied, " One must have patience, my dear 1 " Three turn-
keys who entered responsive to a bell she rang, echoed the sentiment,
and one added, " For the love of Liberty ; " which sounded in that
place like an inappropriate conclusion.

The prison of La Force was a gloomy prison, dark and filthy, and
with a horrible smell of foul sleep in it. Extraordinary how soon »
the noisome flavour of imprisoned sloop, becomes manifest in all such
places that are ill cared for I

I

In secret. 531

" In secret, too," grumbled the gaoler, looking at the written paper.
" As if I was not already full to bursting ! "

He stuck the paper on a file, in an ill-humour, and Charles Darnay
awaited his further pleasure for half an hour : sometimes, pacing to
and fro in the strong arched room : sometimes, resting on a stone
seat : in either case detained to be imprinted on the memory of the
chief and his subordinates.

" Come ! " said the chief, at length taking up his keys, " come with
me, emigrant."

Through the dismal prison twilight, his new charge accompanied
hira by corridor and staircase, many doors clanging and locking
behind them, until they came into a large, low, vaulted chamber,
crowded with prisoners of both sexes. The women were seated at a
long table, reading and writing, knitting, sewing, and embroidering ;
the men were for the most part standing behind their chairs, or
lingering up and down the room.

In the instinctive association of prisoners with shameful crime and
disgrace, the new-comer recoiled from this company. But the crown-
ing unreality of his long unreal ride, was, their all at once rising to
receive him, with every refinement of manner known to the time, and
with all the engaging graces and courtesies of life.

So strangely clouded were these refinements by the prison manners
and gloom, so spectral did they become in the inappropriate squalor
and misery through which they were seen, that Charles Darnay
seemed to stand in a company of the dead. Ghosts all ! The ghost
of beauty, the ghost of stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of
pride, the ghost of frivolity, the ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the
ghost of age, all waiting their dismissal from the desolate shore, all
turning on him eyes that were changed by the death they had died in
coming there.

It struck him motionless. The gaoler standing at his side, and the
other gaolers moving about, who would have been well enough as to
appearance in the ordinary exercise of their functions, looked so
extravagantly coarse contrasted with sorrowing mothers and blooming
daughters who wore there — with the apparitions of the coquette, the
young beauty, and the mature woman delicately bred — that the in-
version of all experience and likelihood which the scene of shadows
presented, was heightened to its utmost. Surely, ghosts all. Surely,
the long unreal rido some progress of disease that had bi'ought him to
these gloomy shades !

" In the name of the assembled companions in misfortune," said a
gentleman of courtly appearance and address, coming forward, " I
have the honour of giving you welcome to La Force, and of condoling
with you on the calamity that has brought you among us. May it
soon terminate hapjiily ! It would be an impertinence elsewhere, bnt
it is not so here, to ask your name and condition ? "
' Charles Darnay roused himself, and gave the required infonnation,
f u words as suitable as ho could find.

532 A Tale of Tzvo Cities.

" But I hope," said the gentleman, following the chief gaoler with
his eyes, who moved across the room, " that you are not in secret ? "

" I do not understand the meaning of the term, but I have heard
them say so."

" Ah, what a pity ! We so much regret it ! But take courage ;
several members of our society have been in secret, at first, and it has
lasted but a short time." Then he added, raising his voice, " I grieve
to inform the society — in secret."

There was a murmur of commiseration as Charles Darnay crossed
the room to a grated door where the gaoler awaited him, and many
voices — among which, the soft and compassionate voices of women
were conspicuous — gave him good wishes and encouragement. He
turned at the grated door, to render the thanks of his heart ; it closed
under the gaoler's hand ; and the apparitions vanished from his sight
for ever.

The wicket opened on a stone staircase, leading npward. When
they had ascended forty steps (the prisoner of half an hour ali-eady
counted them), the gaoler opened a low black door, and they passed
into a solitary cell. It struck cold and damp, but was not dark.

" Yours," said the gaoler.

" Why am I confined alone ? "

« How do I know ! "

" I can buy pen, ink, and paper ? "

" Such are not my orders. You will be visited, and can ask then.
At present, you may buy your food, and nothing more."

There were in the cell, a chair, a table, and a straw mattress. As
the gaoler made a general inspection of these objects, and of the four
walls, before going out, a wandering fancy wandered through the mind
of the prisoner leaning against the wall opposite to him, that this
gaoler was so unwholesomely bloated, both in face and person, as to
look like a man who had been drowned and filled with water. When
the gaoler was gone, he thought in the same wandering way, " Now am
I left, as if I were dead." Stopping then, to look down at the mattress,
he turned from it with a sick feeling, and thought, " And here in
these crawling creatures is the first condition of the body after death."

" Five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half, five
paces by four and a half." The prisoner walked to and fro in his
cell, counting its measurement, and the roar of the city arose like
muffled drums with a wild swell of voices added to them. " He made
shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes." The prisoner counted the
measurement again, and paced faster, to draw his mind with him from
that latter repetition. " The ghosts that vanished when the wicket
•closed. There was one among them, the appearance of a lady dressed
in black, who was leaning in the embrasure of a window, and she had
a light shining upon her golden hair, and she looked like * * * *
Let us ride on again, for God's sake, through the illuminated villages
with the people all awake ! * * * * He made shoes, he made shoes,

Tellson's Bank in Paris. 533

he made shoes. * ♦ • ♦ five paces by four and a half." With
such scraps tossing and rolling upward from tlic depths of his mind,
the prisoner walked faster and faster, obstinately counting and count-
ing ; and the roar of the city changed to this extent — that it still
rolled in like muffled drums, but with the wail of voices that he knew,
in the swell that rose above them.

CHAPTER II.

THE GRINDSTONE.

Tellson's Bank, established in the Saint Germain Qujirter of Paris,
was in a wing of a large house, approached by a court-yard and shut
off from the street by a high wall and a strong gate. The house
belonged to a great nobleman who had lived in it until he made a
flight from the troubles, in his own cook's dress, and got across the
borders. A mere beast of the chase flying from hunters, he was stUl
in his metempsychosis no other than the same Monseigueur, the pre-
paration of whose chocolate for whose lips had once occupied three
strong men besides the cook in question.

Monseigneur gone, and the three strong men absolving themselves
from the sin of having drawn his high wages, by being more than
ready and willing to cut his throat on the altar of the dawning
Eepublic One and Indivisible of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or
Death, Monseigneur's house had been first sequestrated, and then con-
fiscated. For, all things moved so fast, and decree followed decree
with that fierce precipitation, that now upon the third night of tlie
autumn month of September, patriot emissaries of the law were in
possession of Monseigneur's house, and had marked it with the
tricolour, and were drinking brandy in its state apartments.

A place of business in London like Tellson's place of business in
Paris, would soon have driven the House out of its mind and into the
Gazette. For, what would staid British responsibility and respecta-
bility have said to orange-trees in boxes in a Bank court-yard, and
even to a Cupid over the counter ? Yet such things were. Tellson's
had whitewashed the Cupid, but he was still to be seen en the ceiling,
in the coolest linen, aiming (as he very often does) at money from
morning to night. Bankruptcy must inevitably have come of this
young Pagan, in Lombard Street, London, and also of a curtained
alcove in the rear of the immortal boy, and also of a looking-glass let
into the wall, and also of clerks not at all old, who danced in public
on the slightest provocation. Yet, a French Tellson's could get on
with these things exceedingly well, and, as long as the times held
together, no man had taken fright at them, and drawn out his money.

534 ^ ^^^^ ^f '^"^^ Cities.

What money would bo drawn out of Tellson's henceforth, and what
would lie therOj lost and forgotten ; what plate and jewels would
tarnish in Tellson's hiding-places, while the depositors rusted in
prisons, and when they should have violently perished ; how many
accounts A^ath Tellson's never to be balanced in this world, must be
carried over into the next ; no man could have said, that night, any
more than Mr. Jarvis Lorry could, though he thought heavily of
these questions. He sat by a newly-lighted wood fire (the blighted
and unfruitful year was prematurely cold), and on his honest and
courageous face there was a deeper shade than the pendent lamp
could throw, or any object in the room distortedly reflect — a shade
of horror.

He occupied rooms in the Bank, in his fidelity to the House of
which he had grown to bo a part, like strong root-ivy. It chanced
that they derived a kind of security from the patriotic occupation of
the main building, but the true-hearted old gentleman never calculated
about that. All such circumstances were indifferent to him, so that
he did his duty. On the opposite side of the court-yard, under a
colonnade, was extensive standing for carriages — where, indeed, some
carriages of Monseigneur yet stood. Against two of the pillars were
fastened two great flaring flambeaux, and in the light of these, stand-
ing out in the open air, was a large grindstone : a roughly mounted
thing which appeared to have hurriedly been brought there from some
neighbouring smithy, or other workshop. Rising and looking out of
window at these harmless objects, Mr. Lorry shivered, and retired to
his seat by the fire. He had opened, not only the glass wdndow, but
the lattice blind outside it, and he had closed both again, and ho
shivered through his frame.

From the streets beyond the high wall and the strong gate, thero
came the usual night hum of the city, with now and then an in-
describable ring in it, weird and unearthly, as if some unwonted
sounds of a terrible nature were going up to Heaven.

" Thank God," said Mr. Lorry, clasping his hands, " that no one
near and dear to me is in this dreadful town to-night. May He have
mercy on all who are in danger ! "

Soon afterwards, the bell at the great gate sounded, and he thought,
" They have come back ! " and sat listening. But there was no loud
irruption into the court-yard, as he had expected, and he heard the
gate clash again, and all was quiet.

The nervousness and dread that were upon him inspired that
vague uneasiness respecting the Bank, which a great change would
naturally awaken, with such feelings roused. It was well guarded,
and he got up to go among the trusty people who were watching it,
when his door suddenly opened, and two figures rushed in, at sight
of which he fell back in amazement.

Lucie and her father ! Lucie with her arms stretched out to him,
and with that old look of earnestness so concentrated and intensified,

Lucie and her FatJier in Paris. 535

that it seemed as though it had been stamped upon her face expressly
to give force and power to it in this one passage of her life.

"What is this?" cried Mr. Lorry, breathless and confused.
"What is the matter? Lucie! Manette! What has happened?
What has brought you here ? What is it ? "

With the look fixed upon him, in her paleness and wildness, she
panted out in his arms, imploringly, "0 my dear friend! My
husband ! "

" Your husband, Lucie ? "

« Charles."

"What of Charles?"

« Here."

"Hero, in Paris?"

" Has been here some days — three or four — I don't know how many
— I can't collect my thoughts. An errand of generosity brought him
here unknown to us; he was stopped at the barrier, and sent to
prison."

The old man uttered an irrepressible cry. Almost at the same
moment, the bell of the great gate rang again, and a loud noise of
feet and voices came pouring into the court-yard.

" What is that noise ? " said the Doctor, turning towards the window.

" Don't look I " cried Mr. Lorry. " Don't look out ! Manette, for
your life, don't touch the blind ! "

The Doctor turned, with his hand upon the fastening of the window,
and said, with a cool, bold smile :

" My dear friend, I have a charmed life in this city. I have been
a Bastille prisoner. There is no patriot in Paris — in Paris? In
France — who, knowing me to have been a prisoner in the Bastille,
would touch me, except to overwhelm me with embraces, or carry me
in triumph. My old pain has given me a power that has brought us
through the barrier, and gained us news of Charles there, and brought
us here. I knew it would be so ; I knew I could help Charles out of
all danger ; I told Lucie so. — What is that noise ? " His hand was
again upon the window.

" Don't look ! " cried Mr. Lorry, absolutely desperate. " No, Lucie,
my dear, nor you ! " He got his arm round her, and held her.
"Don't be so terrified, my love. I solemnly swear to you that I
know of no harm having happened to Charles; that I had no sus-
picion even of his being in this fatal place. What prison is he in ? "

« La Force ! "

" La Force ! Lucie, my child, if ever you were brave and service-
able in your life — and you were always both — you will compose your-
self now, to do exactly as I bid you ; for more depends upon it than
you can think, or I can say. There is no help for you in any action
on your part to-night; you cannot possibly stir out. I say this,
because what I must bid you to do for Charles's sake, is the hardest
thing to do of all. You must instantly be obedient, still, and quiet.

53^ A Tale of Two Cities.

You must let me put you in a room at the back liere. You must
leave your father and me alone for two minutes, and as there are Life
and Death in the world you must not delay."

" I will be submissive to you. I see ill your face that you know I
can do nothing else than this. I know you are true."

The old man kissed her, and hurried her into his room, and turned
the key; then, came hurrying back to the Doctor, and opened the
window and partly opened the blind, and put his hand upon the
Doctor's arm, and looked out with him into the court-yard.

Looked out upon a throng of men and women: not enough in
number, or near enough, to fill the court-yard : not more than forty
or fifty in all. The people in possession of the house had let them in
at the gate, and they had rushed in to work at the grindstone ; it had
evidently been set up there for their purpose, as in a convenient and
retired spot.

But, such awful workers, and such awful work !

The grindstone had a double handle, and, turning at it madly were
two men, whose faces, as their long hair flapped back when the
whirlings of the grindstone brought their faces up, were more horrible
and cruel than the visages of the wildest savages in their most
barbarous disguise. False eyebrows and false moustaches were
stuck upon them, and their hideous countenances were all bloody and
sweaty, and all awry with howling, and all staring and glaring with
beastly excitement and want of sleep. As these rufiians turned and
turned, their matted locks now flung forward over their eyes, now
flung backward over their necks, some women held wine to their
mouths that they might drink ; and what with dropping blood, and
what with dropping wine, and what with the stream of sparks struck
out of the stone, all their wicked atmosphere seemed gore and fire.
The eye could not detect one creature in the group free from the
smear of blood. Shouldering one another to get next at the sharpening-
stone, were men stripped to the waist, with the stain all over their
limbs and bodies ; men in all sorts of rags, with the stain upon those
rags ; men devilishly set ofi" with spoils of women's lace and silk and
ribbon, with the stain dyeing those trifles through and through.
Hatchets, knives, bayonets, swords, all brought to be sharpened, were
all red with it. Some of the hacked swords were tied to the wrists of
those who carried them, with strips of linen and^^f ragmen ts of dress :
ligatures various in kind, but all deep of the one colour. And as the
frantic wielders of these weapons snatched them from the stream of
sparks and tore away into the streets, the same red hue was red in
their frenzied eyes ; — eyes which any unbrutalised beholder would
have given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well-directed gun.

All this was seen in a moment, as the vision of a drowning man, or
of any human creature at any very great pass, could see a world if
it were there. They drew back from the window, and the Doctor
looked for explauatiou in his friend's ashy face,

The Grindstone and the Bastille Prisoner, 537

" TTiey are," Mr. Lorry whispered the words, glancing fearfnlly
round at the locked room, " murdering the prisoners. If you are sure
of what you say ; if you really have the power you think you have —
as I believe you have — make yourself known fo these devils, and get
taken to La Force. It may be too late, I don't know, but let it not
be a minute later ! "

Doctor Manetto pressed his hand, hastened bareheaded out of the
room, and was in the court-yard when Mr. Lorry regained the
blind.

His streaming white hair, his remarkable face, and the impetuous
confidence of his manner, as he put the weapons aside like water,
carried him in an instant to the heart of the concourse at the stone.
For a few moments there was a pause, and a hurry, and a murmur,
and the unintelligible sound of his voice ; and then Mr. Lony saw
him, surrounded by all, and in the midst of a line of twenty men long,
all linked shoulder to shoulder, and hand to shoulder, hurried out
with cries of — " Live the Bastille prisoner 1 Help for the Bastille
prisoner's kindred in La Force ! Room for the Bastille prisoner in
front there ! Save the prisoner Evremonde at La Force ! " and a
thousand answering shouts.

He closed the lattice again with a fluttering heart, closed the
window and the curtain, hastened to Lucie, and told her that her
father was assisted by the people, and gone in search of her husband.
He found her child and Miss Press with her; but, it never occurred
to him to be surprised by their ajipearance until a long time after-
wards, when he sat watching them in such quiet as the night know.

Lucie had, by that time, fallen into a stupor on the floor at his feet,
clinging to his hand. Miss Press had laid the child down on his own
bed, and her head had gradually fallen on the pillow beside her pretty
charge. O the long, long night, with the moans of the poor wife !
And O the long, long night, with no return of her father and no
tidings !

Twice more in the darkness the bell at the great gate sounded, and
the irruption was repeated, and the grindstone whirled and spluttered.
"What is it?" cried Lucie, affrighted. "Hush! The soldiers'
swords are sharpened there," said Mr. Lorry. " The place is national
property now, and used as a kind of armoury, my love."

Twice more in all ; but, the last spell of work was feeble and fitful.
Soon afterwards the day began to dawn, and he softly detached him-
self from the clasping hand, and cautiously looked out again. A
man, so besmeared that he might have been a sorely wounded soldier
creeping back to consciousness on a field of slain, was rising from the
pavement by the side of the grindstone, and looking about him with
a vacant air. Shortly, this worn-out murderer descried in the im-
perfect light one of the carriages of Monseigneur, and, staggering to
that gorgeous vehicle, climbed in at the door, and shut himself up to
take his rest on its dainty cushions.

538 A Tale of Two Cities.

Tho great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr. Lorry looked out
again, and the sun was red on the court-yard. But, the lesser grind-
stone stood alone there in the calm morning air, with a red upon it
that the sun had never given, and would never take away

CHAPTER III.

THE SHADOW.

One of the first considerations which arose in the business mind of
Mr. Lorry when business hours came round, was this : — that he had
no right to imperil Tellson's by sheltering the wife of an emigrant
prisoner under the Bank roof. His own possessions, safety, life, ho
would have hazarded for Lucie and her child, without a moment's
demur ; but the great trust he held was not his own, and as to that
business charge he was a strict man of business.

At first, his mind reverted to Defarge, and he thought of finding
out the wine-shop again and taking counsel with its master in refer-
ence to the safest dwelling-place in the distracted state of the city.
But, the same consideration that suggested him, repudiated him ; ho
lived in the most violent Quarter, and doubtless was influential there,
and deep in its dangerous workings.

Noon coming, and the Doctor not returning, and every minute's
delay tending to compromise Tellson's, Mr. Lorry advised with
Lucie. She said that her father had spoken of hiring a lodging for
a short term, in that Quarter, near the Banking-house. As there was
no business objection to this, and as he foresaw that even if it were
all well with Charles, and ho were to be released, he could not hope
to leave the city, Mr. Lorry went out in quest of such a lodging, and
found a suitable one, high up in a removed by-street where the closed
blinds in all the other windows of a high melancholy square of build-
ings marked deserted homes.

* To this lodging he at once removed Lucie and her child, and Miss
Press ; giving them what comfort ho could, and much more than he
had himself. He left Jerry with them, as a figure to fill a doorway
that would bear considerable knocking on the head, and returned to
his own occupations. A disturbed and doleful mind he brought to
bear upon them, and slowly and heavily the day lagged on with him.

It wore itself out, and wore him out with it, until the Bank closed.
He was again alone in his room of the previous night, considering
what to do next, when he heard a foot upon the stair. In a few
moments, a man stood in his presence, who, with a keenly observant
look at him, addressed him by his name.

" Your servant," said Mr. Lorry. " Do you know me ?"

Madame Defarge ever knitting, 539

Ho wfts a strongly made man with dark cnrling hair, from forty-
five to fifty years of age. For answer Le repeated, without any change
of emphasis, the words :

" Do you know me ? "

" I have seen you somewhere."

" Perhaps at my wine-shop ? "

Much interested and agitated, Mr. Lorry said : " You come from
Doctor Manette ? "

" Yes. I come from Doctor Manette."

" And what says he ? What does he send mo ? "

Defarge gave into his anxious hand, an open scrap of paper. It
bore the words in the Doctor's writing :

" Charles is safe, but I cannot safely leave this place yet. I have
obtained the favour that the bearer has a short note from Charles to
his wife. Let the bearer see his wife."

It was dated from La Force, within an hour.

" Will you accompany me," said Mr. Lorry, joyfully relieved after
reading this note aloud, " to where his wife resides ? "

" Yes," returned Defarge.

Scarcely noticing as yet, in what a curiously reserved and mechanical
way Defarge spoke, Mr. Lorry put on his hat and they went down
into the court-yard. There, they found two women ; one, knitting.

" Madame Defarge, surely ! " said Mr. Lorry, who had left her in
exactly the same attitude some seventeen years ago.

" It is she," observed her husband.

*' Does Madame go with us ? " inquired Mi*. Lony, seeing that she
moved as they moved.

" Yes. That she may be able to recognise the faces and know the
persons. It is for their safety."

Beginning to be struck by Defarge's manner, Mr. Lorry looked
dubiously at him, and led the way. Both the women followed ; the
second woman being The Vengeance.

They passed through the intervening streets as quickly as they
might, ascended the staircase of the new domicile, were admitted by
Jerry, and found Lucie weeping, alone. She was thrown into a trans-
port by the tidings Mr. Lorry gave her of her husband, and clasped
the hand that delivered his note — little thinking what it had been
doing near him in the night, and might, but for a chance, have done
to him.

"Dearest, — Take courage. I am well, and your father has in-
fluence around me. You cannot answer this. Kiss our child for me."

That was all the writing. It was so much, however, to her who
received'it, that she turned from Defarge to his wife, and kissed one

540 -A Tale of Two Cities.

of the hands that knitted. It was a passionate, loving, thankful,
womanly action, but the hand made no response — dropped cold and
heavy, and took to its knitting again.

There was something in its touch that gave Lucie a check. She
stopped in the act of putting the note in her bosom, and, with her
hands yet at her neck, looked terrified at Madame Defarge. Madame
Defarge met the lifted eyebrows and forehead with a cold, impassive
stare.

" My dear," said Mr. Lorry, striking in to explain ; " there are
frequent risings in the streets; and, although it is not likely they
will ever trouble you, Madame Defarge wishes to see those whom she
has the power to protect at such times, to the end that she may know
them — that she may identify them. I believe," said Mr. Lorry, rather
halting in his reassuring words, as the stony manner of all the three
impressed itself upon him more and more, " I state the case, Citizen
Defarge ? "

Defarge looked gloomily at his wife, and gave no other answer than
a gruff sound of acquiescence.

"You had better, Lucie," said Mr. Lorry, doing all he could to
propitiate, by tone and manner, " have the dear child here, and our
good Pross. Our good Pross, Defarge, is an English lady, and knows
no French,"

The lady in question, whose rooted conviction that she was more
than a match for any foreigner, was not to be shaken by distress and
danger, appeared with folded arms, and observed in English to The
Vengeance, whom her eyes first encountered, " Well, I am sure,
Boldface ! I hope you are pretty well ! " She also bestowed a British
cough on Madame Defarge ; but, neither of the two took much heed
of her.

" Is that his child ? " said Madame Defarge, stopping in her work
for the first time, and pointing her knitting-needle at little Lucie as
if it were the finger of Fate.

" Yes, madame," answered Mr. Lorry ; " this is our poor prisoner's
darling daughter, and only child."

The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed
to fall so threatening and dark on the child, that her mother in-
stinctively kneeled on the ground beside her, and held her to her
breast. The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party
seemed then to fall, threatening and dark, on both the mother and
the child.

*' It is enough, my husband," said Madame Defarge. " I have seen
them. We may go."

But, the suppressed manner had enough of menace in it — not visible
and presented, but indistinct and withheld — to alai'm Lucie into saying,
as she laid her appealing hand on Madame Defarge's dress :

" You will be good to my poor liusband. You 'will do him no harm.
You will help me to see him if you can ? "

Lucie and Madame Defarge. 541

" Your husband is not my business here," returned Madame Defarge,
looking down at her with perfect composure. " It is the daughter of
your father who is my business here."

" For my sake, then, be merciful to my husband. For my child's
sake ! She will put her hands together and pray you to be merciful.
Wo are more afraid of you than of these others."

Madame Defarge received it as a compliment, and looked at her
husband. Defarge, who had been uneasily biting his thumb-nail and
looking at her, collected his face into a sterner expression.

" What is it that your husband says in that little letter ? " asked
Madame Defarge, with a lowering smile. " Influence ; he says some-
thing touching influence ? "

" That my father," said Lucie, hurriedly taking the paper from her
breast, but with her alarmed eyes on her questioner and not on it,
" has much influence around him."

" Surely it will release him ! " said Madame Defarge. " Let it do so."

" As a wife and mother," cried Lucie, most earnestly, " I implore
you to have pity on me and not to exercise any power that you possess,
against my innocent husband, but to use it in his behalf. O sister-
woman, think of me. As a wife and mother 1 "

Madame Defarge looked, coldly as ever, at the suppliant, and said,
turning to her friend The Vengeance :

" The wives and mothers we have been used to see, since we were
as little as this child, and much less, have not been greatly considered ?
We have known their husbands and fathers laid in prison and kept
from them, often enough ? All our lives, we have seen our sister-
women suffer, in themselves and in their children, poverty, nakedness,
hunger, thirst, sickness, misery, oppression and neglect of all kinds ? "

" We have seen nothing else," returned The Vengeance.

" We have borne this a long time," said Madame Defarge, turning
her eyes again upon Lucie. "Judge you! Is it likely that the
trouble of one wife and mother would be much to us now ? "

She resumed her knitting and went out. The Vengeance followed.
Defarge went last, and closed the door.

" Courage, my dear Lucie," said Mr. Lorry, as he raised her.
" Courage, courage ! So far all goes well with us — much, much better
than it has of late gone with many poor souls. Cheer up, and have
a thankful heart."

" I am not thankless, I hope, but that dreadful woman seems to
throw a shadow on me and on all my hopes."

" Tut, tut I " said Mr. Lorry ; " what is this despondency in the
brave little breast ? A shadow indeed ! No substance in it, Lucie."

But the shadow of the manner of these Defarges was dark upon
himself, for all that, and in his secret mind it troubled him greatly.

CHAPTER IV.

CALM IN STORM.

Doctor Manette did not return until the morning of the fourth day
of his absence. So much of what had happened in that dreadful time
as could be kept from the knowledge of Lucie was so well concealed
from her, that not until long afterwards, when France and she were far
apart, did she know that eleven hundred defenceless prisoners of both
sexes and all ages had been killed by the populace ; that four days and
nights had been darkened by this deed of horror ; and that the air
around her had been tainted by the slain. She only knew that there had
been an attack upon the prisons, that all political prisoners had been in
danger, and that some had been dragged out by the crowd and murdered.

To Mr. Lorry, the Doctor communicated under an injunction of
secrecy on which he had no need to dwell, that the crowd had taken
him through a scene of carnage to the prison of La Force. That, in
the prison he had found a self-appointed Tribunal sitting, before
which the prisoners were brought singly, and by which they ^vere
rapidly ordered to be put forth to be massacred, or to be released, or
(in a few cases) to be sent back to their colls. That, presented by his
conductors to this Tribunal, he had announced himself by name and
profession as having been for eighteen years a secret and unaccused
prisoner in the Bastille ; that, one of the body so sitting in judgment
had risen and identified him, and that this man was Defarge.

That, hereupon he had ascertained, through the registers on the
table, that his son-in-law was among the living jirisoners, and had
pleaded hard to the Tribunal — of whom some members were asleep
and some awake, some dii'ty with murder and some clean, some sober
and some not — for his life and liberty. That, in the first frantic
greetings lavished on himself as a notable sufferer under the over-
thrown system, it had been accorded to him to have Charles Darnay
brought before the lawless Court, and examined. That, he seemed on
the point of being at once released, when the tide in his favour met
with some unexplained check (not intelligible to the Doctor), which
led to a few words of secret conference. That, the man sitting as
President had then informed Doctor Manette that the prisoner must
remain in custody, but should, for his sake, be held inviolate in safe
custody. That, immediately, on a signal, the prisoner was removed
to the interior of the prison again ; but, that he, the Doctor, had then
so strongly pleaded for permission to remain and assure himself that
his son-in-law was, through no malice or mischance, delivered to the
concourse whose murderous yells outside the gate had often drowned
the proceedings, that he had obtained the permission, and liad
remained in that Hall of Blood until the danger was over.

The Doctor, powerful. 543

The sights he had seen there, with biief snatches of food and sleep
by intervals, shall remain untold. The mad joy over the prisoners who
were saved, had astounded him scarcely less than the mad ferocity
against those who wore cut to pieces. One prisoner there was, he
said, who had been discharged into the street free, but at whom a
mistaken savage had thrust a pike as he passed out. Being besought
to go to him and dress tho wound, the Doctor had passed out at the
same gate, and had found him in the arms of a company of Samaritans,
who were seated on the bodies of their victims. With an inconsistency
as monstrous as anything in this awful nightmare, they had helped
the healer, and tended the wounded man with the gentlest solicitude
— had made a litter for him and escorted him carefully from the spot
— had then caught up their weapons and plunged anew into a butchery
so dreadful, that the Doctor had covered his eyes with his hands, and
swooned away in the midst of it.

As Mr. Lorry received these confidences, and as he watched tho
face of his friend now sixty-two years of age, a misgiving arose within
him that such dread experiences would revive the old danger. But,
ho had never seen his friend in his present aspect : he had never at
all known him in his present character. For the first time the Doctor
felt, now, that his suffering was strength and power. For the first
time he felt that in that sharp fire, he had slowly forged the iron
which could break the prison door of his daughter's husband, and
deliver him. " It all tended to a good end, my friend ; it was not
mere waste and ruin. As my beloved child was helpful in restoring
me to myself, I will be helpful now in restoring the dearest part of
herself to her ; by the aid of Heaven I will do it ! " Thus, Doctor
Manette. And when Jarvis Lorry saw the kindled eyes, the resolute
face, the calm strong look and bearing of the man whoso life always
seemed to him to have been stopped, like a clock, for so many years,
and then set going again with an energy which had lain dormant
during the cessation of its usefulness, he believed.

Greater things than the Doctor had at that time to contend with,
would have yielded before his persevering purpose. While he kept
himself in his place, as a physician, whoso business was with all
degrees of mankind, bond and free, rich and poor, bad and good, he
used his personal influence so wisely, that he was soon the inspecting
physician of three prisons, and among them of La Force. He could
now assure Lucie that her husband was no longer confined alone, but
was mixed with the general body of prisoners ; he saw her husband
weekly, and brought sweet messages to her, straight from his lips ;
sometimes her husband himself sent a letter to her (though never by
the Doctor's hand), but she was not permitted to write to him : for,
among the many wild suspicions of plots in the prisons, the wildest of
all pointed at emigrants who were known to have made friends or
permanent connections abroad.

This new life of the Doctor's was an anxious life, no doubt ; still,

544 -^ 2"<?/<? of Two Cities.

the Bftgaclous Mr. Lorry saw that there was a new sustaining pride in
it. Nothing unbecoming tinged the pride ; it was a nat^jral and
worthy one; but he observed it as a curiosity. The Doctor knew,
that up to that time, his imprisonment had been associated in the
minds of his daughter and his friend, with his personal affliction,
deprivation, and weakness. Now that this was changed, and he knew
himself to be invested through that old trial with forces to which they
both looked for Charles's ultimate safety and deliverance, he became
BO far exalted by the change, that he took the lead and direction, and
required them as the weak, to trust to him as the strong. The
preceding relative positions of himself and Lucie were reversed, yet
only as the liveliest gratitude and affection could reverse them, for he
could have had no pride but in rendering some service to her who
had rendered so much to him. " All curious to see," thought Mi*.
Lorry, in his amiably shrewd way, " but all natural and right ; so,
take the lead, my dear friend, and keep it ; it couldn't be in better
hands."

But, though the Doctor tried hard, and never ceased trying, to get
Charles Darnay set at liberty, or at least to get him brought to trial,
the public current of the time set too strong and fast for him. The
new era began ; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded ; the
Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for victory
or death against the world in arms ; the black flag waved night and
day from the great towers of Notre Dame ; three hundred thousand
men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all
the varying soils of France, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown
broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in
gravel, and alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and under
the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the
olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the
corn, along the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of
the sea-shore. What private solicitude could rear itself against the
deluge of the Year One of Liberty — the deluge rising from below,
not falling from above, and with the windows of Heaven shut, not
opened !

There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest,
no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as regularly
as when time was young, and the evening and morning were the first
day, other count of time there was none. Hold of it was lost in the
raging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever of one patient. Now,
breaking the unnatural silence of a whole city, the executioner showed
the people the head of the king — and now, it seemed almost in the
same breath, the head of his fair wife which had had eight weary
months of imprisoned widowhood and misery, to turn it grey.

And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction which obtains
in all such cases, the time was long, while it flamed by so fast. A
revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty or fifty thousand revo-

The New Era in Full Rush. 545

lutionary committees all over the land ; a law of the Suspected, which
struck away all security for liberty or life, and delivered over any
good and innocent person to any bad and guilty one ; prisons gorged
with people who had committed no offence, and could obtain no hear-
ing ; these things became the established order and nature of appointed
things, and seemed to be ancient usage before they were many weeks
old. Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been
before the general gaze from the foundations of the world — the figure
of the sharp female called La Guillotine.

It was the popular theme for jests ; it was the best cure for head-
ache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted a
peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which
shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked through the little
window and sneezed into the sack. It was the sign of the regeneration
of the human race. It superseded the Cross. Models of it were worn
on breasts from which the Cross was discarded, and it was bowed
down to and believed in where the Cross was denied.

It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted,
were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle for a
young Devil, and was put together again when the occasion wanted it.
It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful, abolished the beau-
ful and good. Twenty-two friends of high public mark, twenty-one
living and one dead, it had lopped the heads off, in one morning, in as
many minutes. The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had
descended to the chief functionary who worked it ; but, so armed, he
was stronger than his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates
of God's own Temple every day.

Among these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, the Doctor
walked with a steady head : confident in his power, cautiously per-
sistent in his end, never doubting that he would save Lucie's husband
at last. Yet the current of the time swept by, so strong and deep, and
carried the time away so fiercely, that Charles had lain in prison one
year and three months when the Doctor was thus steady and confident.
So much more wicked and distracted had the Revolution grown in that
December month, that the rivers of the South were encumbered with
the bodies of the violently drowned by night, and prisoners were shot
in lines and squares under the southern wintry sim. Still, the Doctor
walked among the terrors with a steady head. No man better known
than he, in Paris at that day ; no man in a stranger situation. Silent,
humane, indispensable in hospital and prison, using his art equally
among assassins and victims, he was a man apart. In the exercise of
his skill, the appearance and the story of the Bastille Captive removed
him from all other men. He was not suspected or brought in question,
any more than if he had indeed been recalled to life some eighteen
years before, or were a Spirit moving among mortals.

2h

CHAPTER V.

THE WOOD-SAWTEB.

One year and three months. During all that time Lucie was never
sure, from hour to hour, but that the Guillotine would strike off her
husband's head next day. Every day, through the stony streets, the
tumbrils now jolted heavily, filled with Condemned. Lovely girls ;
bright women, brown-haired, black-haired, and grey ; yonths ; stalwart
men and old ; gentle born and peasant born ; all red wine for La
Guillotine, all daily brought into light from the dark cellars of the
loathsome prisons, and carried to her through the streets to slake her
devouring thirst. Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death ; — the last,
much the easiest to bestow, 0 Guillotine !

If the suddenness of her calamity, and the whirling wheels of the
time, had stunned the Doctor's daughter into awaiting the result in
idle despair, it wonld but have been with her as it was with many.
But, from the hour when she had taken the white head to her fresh
young bosom in the garret of Saint Antoine, she had been true to her
duties. She was truest to them in the season of trial, as all the quietly
loyal and good will always be.

As soon as they were established in their new residence, and her
father had entered on the routine of his avocations, she arranged the
little household as exactly as if her husband had been there. Every-
thing had its appointed place and its appointed time. Little Lucie
she taught, as regularly, as if they had all been united in thoir English
home. The slight devices with which she cheated herself into the
show of a belief that they would soon be reunited — the little prepara-
tions for his speedy return, the setting aside of his chair and his books
— these, and the solemn prayer at night for one dear prisoner especially,
among the many unhappy souls in prison and the shadow of death —
were almost the only outspoken reliefs of her heavy mind.

She did not grea'ly alter in appearance. The plain dark dresses,
akin to mourning dresses, which she and her child wore, were as neat
and as well attended to as the brighter clothes of happy days. She
lost her colour, and the old and intent expression was a constant, not
an occasional, thing ; otherwise, she remained very pretty and comely.
Sometimes, at night on kissing her father, she would burst into the
grief she had repressed all day, and woidd say that her sole reliance,
under Heaven, was on him. He always resolutely answered : " Nothing
can happen to him without my knowledge, and I know that I can save
him, Lucie."

They had not made the round of their changed life many weeks,
when her father said to her, on coming home one evening :

" My dear, there is an upper window in the prison, to which

The Prison Window. 547

Charles can sometimes gain access at three in the afternoon. When
he can get to it — which depends on many nncertainties and incidents
— he might see you in the street, he thinks, if you stood in a certain
place that I can show you. But you will not be able to see him, my
poor child, and even if you could, it would be unsafe for you to make
a sign of recognition."

" O show me the place, my father, and I will go there every day."

From that time, iu all weathers, she waited there two hours. As
the clock struck two, she was there, and at four she returned resignedly
away. When it was not too wet or inclement for her child to be with
her, they went together ; at other times she was alone : but, she
never missed a single day.

It was the dark and dirty corner of a small winding street. The
hovel of a cutter of wood into lengths for burning, was the only house
at that end ; all else was wall. On the third day of her being there,
he noticed her.

" Good day, citizoness."

" Good day, citizen."

This mode of address was now prescribed by decree. It had been
established voluntarily some time ago, among the more thorough
patriots ; but, was now law for everybody.

" Walking here again, citizeness ? "

" You see me, citizen ! "

The wood-sawyer, who was a little man with a redundancy of
gesture (he had once been a mender of roads), cast a glance at the
prison, pointed at the prison, and putting his ten fingers before his
face to represent bai*8, peeped through them jocosely.

"But it's not my business," said he. And went on sawing his
wood.

Next day he was looking out for her, and accosted her the moment
she appeared.

" What ? Walking here again, citizeness ? "

" Yes, citizen."

" Ah ! A child too ! Your mother, is it not, my little citizeness ? "

" Do I say yes, mamma ? " whispered little Lucie, drawing close
to her.

" Yes, dearest."

" Yes, citizen."

" Ah ! But it's not my business. My work is my busiaess. See
my saw ! I call it my Little Guillotine. La, la, la ; La, la, la ! And
off his head comes ! "

The billet fell as he spoke, and he threw it into a basket.

" I call myself the Samson of the firewood guillotine. See hero
again ! Loo, loo, loo ; Loo, luo, loo ! And off ^er head comes ! Now,
a child. Tickle, tickle ; Pickle, pickle 1 And off iU head comes.
All the family 1 "

Lucie shuddered as ho threw two more billets into his basket, but

548 A Tale of Two Cities.

it was impossible to be there wbile the wood-sawyer was at work, and
not be in his sight. Thenceforth, to secure his good-will, she always
spoke to him first, and often gave him drink-money, which he readily
received.

He was an inquisitive fellow, and sometimes when she had quite
forgotten him in gazing at the prison roof and grates, and in lifting
her heart up to her husband, she would come to herself to find him
looking at her, with his knee on his bench and his saw stopped in
its work. " But it's not my business ! " he would generally say at
those times, and would briskly fall to his sawing again.

In all weathers, in the snow and frost of winter, in the bitter winds
of spring, in the hot sunshine of summer, in the rains of autumn, and
again in the snow and frost of winter, Lucie passed two hours of every
day at this place ; and every day on leaving it, she kissed the prison
wall. Her husband saw her (so she learned from her father) it
might be once in five or six times : it might be twice or thrice running :
it might be, not for a week or a fortnight together. It was enough that
he could and did see her when the chances served, and on that
possibility she would have waited out the day, seven days a week.

These occupations brought her round to the December month,
wherein her father walked among the terrors with a steady head.
On a lightly-snowing afternoon she arrived at the usual corner. It
was a day of some wild rejoicing, and a festival. She had seen the
houses, as she came along, decorated with little pikes, and with little
red caps stuck upon them ; also, with tricoloured ribbons ; also, with
the standard inscription (tricoloured letters were the favourite),
Eepublic One and Indivisible. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or
Death !

The miserable shop of the wood-sawyer was so small, that its whole
surface furnished very indifferent space for this legend. He had got
somebody to scrawl it up for him, however, who had squeezed Death
in with most inappropriate difficulty. On his house-top, he displayed
pike and cap, as a good citizen must, and in a window he had stationed
his saw inscribed as his " Little Sainte Guillotine " — for the great
sharp female was by that time popularly canonised. His shop was shut
and he was not there, which was a relief to Lucie, and left her quite
alone.

But, he was not far off, for presently she heard a troubled move-
ment and a shouting coming along, which filled her with fear. A
moment afterwards, and a throng of people came pouring round the
corner by the prison wall, in the midst of whom was the wood-sawyer
hand in hand with The Vengeance. There could not be fewer than
five hundred people, and they were dancing like five thousand demons.
There was no other music than their own singing. They danced to
the popular Revolution song, keeping a ferocious time that was lika a
gnashing of teeth in unison. Men and women danced together, women
danced together, men danced together, as hazard had brought them

The Carmagnole. 549

together. At first, they were a mere storm of coarse red caps and coarse
woollen rags ; but, as they filled the place, and stopped to dance about
Lucie, some ghastly apparition of a dance-fignre gone raving mad arcso
among them. They advanced, retreated, struck at one another's hands,
clutched at one another's heads, spun round alone, caught one another
and spun round in pairs, until many of them dropped. While those
were down, the rest linked hand in hand, and all spun round together :
then the ring broke, and in separate rings of two and four they turned
and turned until they all stopped at once, began again, struck, clutched,
and tore, and then reversed the spin, and all spun round another way.
Suddenly they stopped again, paused, struck out the time afresh,
formed into fines the width of the public way, and, with their heads
low down and their hands high up, swooped screaming off. No fight
could have been half so terrible as this dance. It was so emphatically
a fallen sport — a something, once innocent, delivered over to all
devilry — a healthy pastime changed into a means of angering the
blood, bewildering the senses, and steeling the heart. Such grace as
was visible in it, made it the uglier, showing how warped and perverted
all things good by nature were become. The maidenly bosom bared
to this, the pretty almost-child's head thus distracted, the delicate foot
mincing in this slough of blood and dirt, were types of the disjointed
time.

This was the Carmagnole. As it passed, leaving Lucie frightened
and bewildered in the doorway of the wood-sawyer's house, the
feathery snow fell as quietly and lay as white and soft, as if it had
never been.

" 0 my father ! " for he stood before her when she lifted up the
eyes she had momentarily darkened with her hand ; " such a cruel,
bad sight."

" I know, my dear, I know. I have seen it many times. Don't bo
frightened ! Not one of them would harm you."

" I am not frightened for myself, my father. But when I think of
my husband, and the mercies of these people "

" We will set him above their mercies very soon. I left him
climbing to the window, and I came to tell you. There is no one
here to see. You may kiss your hand towards that highest shelving
roof."

" I do so, father, and I send him my Soul with it ! "

*• You cannot see him, my poor dear ? "

" No, father," said Lucie, yearning and weeping as she kissed her
hand, " no."

A footstep in the snow. Madame Defarge. "I salute you,
citizeness," from the Doctor. " I salute you, citizen." This in
passing. Nothing more. Madame Defarge gone, like a shadow over
the white road.

" Give me your arm, my love. Pass from here with an air of
cheerfulness and qourage, for bis sake, That wfts well done j " they

550 A Tale of Two Cities.

had left the spot ; " it shall not he in vain. Charles is summoned
for to-morrow."

" For to-morrow 1 "

" There is no time to lose. I am well prepared, hut there are pre-
cautions to he taken, that could not he taken until he was actually
summoned before the Tribunal. He has not received the notice yet,
but I know that he will presently be summoned for to-morrow, and
removed to the Conciergerie ; I have timely information. You are
not afraid ? "

She could scarcely answer, " I trust in you."

" Do so, implicitly. Your suspense is nearly ended, my darling ;
he shall be restored to you within a few hours ; I have encompassed
him with every protection. I must see Lorry."

He stopped. There was a heavy lumbering of wheels within hear-
ing. They both knew too well what it meant. One. Two. Three.
Three tumbrils faring away with their dread loads over the hushing
snow.

"I must see Lorry," the Doctor repeated, turning her another
way.

The staunch old gentleman was still in his trust ; had never left it.
He and his books wore in frequent requisition as to property con-
fiscated and made national. What he could save for the owners, he
saved. No better man living to hold fast by what Tellson's had in
keeping, and to hold his peace.

A murky red and yellow sky, and a rising mist from the Seine,
denoted the approach of darkness. It was almost dark when they
arrived at the Bank. The stately residence of Monseigneur was
altogether blighted and deserted. Above a heap of dust and ashes in
the court, ran the letters : National Property. Eepublic One and
Indivisible. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death.

Who could that be with Mr. Lorry — the owner of the riding-coat
upon the chair — who must not be seen ? From whom newly arrived,
did he come out, agitated and surprised, to take his favourite in his
arms ? To whom did he appear to repeat her faltering words, when,
raising his voice and turning his head towards the door of the room
from which he had issued, he said ; " Removed to the Conciergerie,
and summoned for to-morrow ? "

CHAPTER VI.

TRIUMPH.

The dread Tribnnal of five Judges, Public Prosecutor, and detenuincd
Jury, sat every day. Their lists went forth every evening, and were
read out by the gaolers of the various prisons to their prisoners. The
standard gaoler-joke was, "Come out and listen to the Evening
Paper, you inside there ! "

" Charles Evremonde, called Darnay ! "

So at last began the Evening Paper at La Force.

When a name was called, its owner stepped apart into a spot
reserved for those who were announced as being thus fatally recorded.
Charles Evremonde, called Darnay, had reason to know the usage ;
he had seen hundreds pass away so.

His bloated gaoler, who wore spectacles to read with, glanced over
them to assure himself that he had taken his place, and went through
the list, making a similar short pause at each name. There were
twenty-three names, but only twenty were responded to ; for one of
the prisoners so summoned had died in gaol and been forgotten, and
two had already been guillotined and forgotten. The list was read,
in the vaulted chamber where Darnay had seen the associated
prisoners on the night of his arrival. Every one of those had
perished in the massacre ; every human creature he had since cared
for and parted with, had died on the scaffold.

There were hurried words of farewell and kindness, but the parting
was soon over. It was the incident of every day, and the society of
La Force were engaged in the preparation of some games of forfeits
and a little concert, for that evening. They crowded to the grates
and shed tears there ; but, twenty places in the projected entertain-
ments had to be refilled, and the time was, at best, short to the
lock-up hour, when the common rooms and corridors would be
delivered over to the great dogs who kept watch there through the
night. The prisoners were far from insensible or unfeeling; their
ways arose out of the condition of the time. Similarly, though with
a subtle diflference, a species of fervour or intoxication, known, without
doubt, to have led some persons to brave the guillotine unnecessarily,
and to die by it, was not mere boastfulness, but a wild infection of
the wildly shaken public mind. In seasons of pestilence, some of
us will have a secret attraction to the disease — a terrible passing
inclination to die of it. And all of us have like wonders hidden in
our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke them.

The passage to the Conciergorio was short and dark ; the night in
its vermin-haunted cells was long and cold. Next day, fifteen prisoners
were put to the bar before Charles Darnay 's name was called. All

552 A Tale of Ttao Cities.

the fifteen were condemned, and the trials of the whole occupied an
hour and a half.

" Charles Evremonde, called Darnay," was at length arraigned.

His judges sat upon the Bench in feathered hats ; hut the rough
red cap and tricoloured cockade was the head-dress otherwise prevail-
ing. Looking at the Jury and the turbulent audience, he might havo
thought that the usual order of things was reversed, and that the
felons were trying the honest men. The lowest, cruelest, «nd worst
populace of a city, never without its quantity of low, cruel, and bad,
were the directing spirits of the scene : noisily commenting, applaud-
ing, disapproving, anticipating, and precipitating the result, without
a check. Of the men, the greater part were armed in various ways ;
of the women, some wore knives, some daggers, some ate and drank
as they looked on, many knitted. Among these last, was one, with a
spare piece of knitting under her arm as she worked. She was in a
front row, by the side of a man whom he had never seen since his
arrival at the Barrier, but whom he directly remembered as Defargo.
He noticed that she onco or twice whispered in his ear, and that she
seemed to be his wife ; but, what he most noticed in the two figures
was, that although they were posted as close to himself as they could
be, they never looked towards him. They seemed to be waiting for
something with a dogged determination, and they looked at the Jury,
but at nothing else. IFnder the President sat Doctor Manette, in his
usual quiet dress. As well as the prisoner could see, he and Mr.
Lorry were the only men there, unconnected with the Tribunal, who
wore their usual clothes, and had not assumed the coarse garb of the
Carmagnole.

Charles Evremonde, called Darnay, was accused by the public
prosecutor as an emigrant, whose life was forfeit to the Republic,
under the decree which banislied all emigrants on pain of Death.
It was nothing that the decree bore date since his return to France.
There he was, and there was the decree ; he had been taken in France,
and his head was demanded.

" Take off his head ! " cried the audience. " An enemy to the
Eepublic ! "

The President rang his bell to silence those cries, and asked the
prisoner whether it was not true that he had lived many years in
England ?

Undoubtedly it was.

Was he not an emigrant then ? "What did he call himself?

Not an emigrant, he hoped, within the sense and spirit of the law.

"Why not ? the President desired to know.

Because he had voluntarily relinquished a title that was distasteful
to him, and a station that was distasteful to him, and had left his
country — he submitted before the word emigrant in the present
acceptation by the Tribunal was in use — to live by his own industry in
England, rather than on the industry of the overladen people of France.

The Emigrant at the Bar. 553

What proof had he of this ?

Hg handed in the names of two witnesses ; Theophile Gabelle, and
Alexandre Manette.

But he had married in England ? the President reminded him.

True, bnt not an English woman.

A citizeness of France ?

Yes. By birth.

Her name and family ?

" Lucie Manette, only daughter of Doctor Manette, the good
physician who sits there."

This answer had a happy effect upon the audience. Cries in
exaltation of the well-known good physician rent the hall. So
capriciously were the people moved, that tears immediately rolled
down several ferocious countenances which had been glaring at the
prisoner a moment before, as if with impatience to pluck him out into
the streets and kill him.

On these few steps of his dangerous way, Charles Damay had set
his foot according to Doctor Manette's reiterated instructions. The
same cautious counsel directed every step that lay before him, and had
prepared every inch of his road.

The President asked, why had he returned to France when he did,
and not sooner ?

He had not returned sooner, he replied, simply because he had no
means of living in France, save those he had resigned ; whereas, in
England, he lived by giving instruction in the French language and
literature. He had returned when he did, on the pressing and written
entreaty of a French citizen, who represented that his life was
endangered by his absence. He had come back, to save a citizen's
life, and to bear his testimony, at whatever personal hazard, to the
truth. Was that criminal in the eyes of the Republic ?

The populace cried enthusiastically, " No ! " and the President rang
his bell to quiet them. Which it did not, for they continued to cry
" No ! " until they left off, of their own will.

The President required the name of that citizen ? The accused
explained that the citizen was his first witness. He also referred
with confidence to the citizen's letter, which had been taken from him
at the Barrier, but which he did not doubt would be found among the
papers then before the President.

The Doctor had taken care that it should be there — had assured
him that it would be there — and at this stage of the proceedings it
was produced and read. Citizen Gabelle was called to confirm it, and
did so. Citizen Gabelle hinted, with infinite delicacy and politeness,
that in the pressure of business imposed on the Tribunal by the
multitude of enemies of the Republic with which it had to deal, he
had been slightly overlooked in his prison of the Abbaye — in fact,
had rather passed out of the Tribunal's patriotic remembrance — until
three days ago ; when he had been eummoued before it, and had been

554 -^ Tale of Tzvo Cities.

Bet at liberty on the Jury's declaring themselves satisfied that the
accusation against him was answered, as to himself, by the surrender
of the citizen Evremonde, called Darnay.

Doctor Manetto was next questioned. His high personal popularity,
and the clearness of his answers, made a great impression ; but, as ho
proceeded, as he showed that the Accused was his first friend on his
release from his long imprisonment ; that, the accused had remained
in England, always faithful and devoted to his daughter and himself
in their exile ; that, so far from being in favour with the Aristocrat
government there, he had actually been tried for his life by it, as the
foe of England and a friend of the United States — as he brought these
circumstances into view, with the greatest discretion and with the
straightforward force of truth and earnestness, the Jury and the
populace became one. At last, when he appealed by name to Monsieur
Lorry, an English gentleman then and there present, who, like himself,
had been a witness on that English trial and could corroborate his
account of it, the Jury declared that they had heard enough, and that
they were ready with their votes if the President were content to
receive them.

At every vote (the Jurymen voted aloud and individually), the
populace set up a shout of applause. All the voices were in the
prisoner's favour, and the President declared him free.

Then, began one of those extraordinary scenes with which the
populace sometimes gratified their fickleness, or their better impulses
towards generosity and mercy, or which they regarded as some set-off
against their swollen account of cruel rage. No man can decide now
to which of these motives such extraordinary scenes were referable ;
it is probable, to a blending of all the three, with the second pre-
dominating. No sooner was the acquittal pronounced, than tears
wore shed as freely as blood at another time, and such fraternal
embraces were bestowed upon the prisoner by as many of both sexes as
could rush at him, that after his long and unwholesome confinement
he was in danger of fainting from exhaustion ; none the less because
he knew very well, that the very same people, carried by another
current, would have rushed at him with the very same intensity, to
rend him to pieces and strew him over the streets.

His removal, to make way for other accused persons who were to be
tried, rescued him from these caresses for the moment. Five were
to be tried together, next, as enemies of the Republic, forasmuch as
they had not assisted it by word or deed. So quick was the Tribunal
to compensate itself and the nation for a chance lost, that these five
came down to him before he left the place, condemned to die within
twenty-four hours. The first of them told him so, with the customary
prison sign of Death — a raised finger — and they all added in words,
" Long live the Republic ! "

The five had had, it is true, no audience to lengthen their proceed-
ings, for when he and Doctor Manette emerged from the gate, there

The Emigrant released. 555

was a great crowd about it, in which there seemed to be every face he
had seen in Court — except two, for which ho looked in vain. On his
coming out, the concourse made at him anew, weeping, embracing,
and shouting, all by turns and all together, until the very tide of the
river on the bank of which the mad scene was acted, seemed to run
mad, like the people on the shore.

They put him into a great chair they had among them, and which
they had taken either out of the Court itself, or one of its rooms or
passages. Over the chair they had thrown a red flag, and to the back
of it they had bound a pike with a red cap on its top. In this car of
triumph, not even the Doctor's entreaties could prevent his being
carried to his home on men's shoulders, with a confused . sea of red
caps heaving about him, and casting up to sight from the stormy deep
such wrecks of faces, that he more than once misdoubted his mind
being in confusion, and that he was in the tumbril on his way to the
Guillotine.

In wild dreamlike procession, embracing whom they met and
pointing him out, they carried him on. Reddening the snowy streets
with the prevailing Eepublican colour, in winding and tramping
through them, as they had reddened them below the snow with a
deeper dye, they carried him thus into the court-yard of the building
where he lived. Her father had gone on before, to prepare her, and
when her husband stood upon his feet, she dropped insensible in his
arms.

As he held her to his heart and turned her beautiful head between
his face and the brawling crowd, so that his tears and her lips might
come together unseen, a few of the people fell to dancing. Instantly,
all the rest fell to dancing, and the court-yard overflowed with the
Carmagnole. Then, they elevated into the vacant chair a young
woman from the crowd to be carried as the Goddess of Liberty, and
then swelling and overflowing out into the adjacent streets, and along
the river's bank, and over the bridge, the Carmagnole absorbed them
. every one and whirled them away.

After grasping the Doctor's hand, as he stood victorious and proud
before him ; after grasping the hand of Mr. Lorry, who came panting
in breathless from his struggle against the waterspout of the Car-
magnole ; after kissing little Lucie, who was lifted up to clasp her
arms round his neck ; and after embracing the ever zealous and faith-
ful Press who lifted her ; he took his wife in his arms, and carried her
up to their rooms.

" Lucie ! My own ! I am safe."

" O dearest Charles, let me thank God for this on my knees as I
have prayed to Him."

They all reverently bowed their heads and hearts. When she was
again in his arms, he said to her :

"And now speak to your father, dearest. No other man in all this
France could have done what he has done for me."

5 $6 A Tale of Two Cities.

She laid her head upon her father's breast, as she had laid his poor
head on her own breast, long, long ago. He was happy in the return
he had made her, he was recompensed for his suffering, he was proud
of his strength. " You must not be weak, my darling," he remon-
strated ; " don't tremble so. I have saved him."

CHAPTER VII.

A KNOCK AT THE DOOE.

" I HAVE saved him." It was not another of the dreams in which he
had often come back ; he was really here. And yet his wife trembled,
and a vague but heavy fear was upon her.

All the air around was so thick and dark, the people were so
passionately revengeful and fitful, the innocent were so constantly put
to death on vague suspicion and black malice, it was so impossible to
forget that many as blameless as her husband and as dear to others
as he was to her, every day shared the fate from -which he had been
clutched, that her heart could not be as lightened of its load as sho
felt it ought to be. The shadows of the wintry afternoon were be-
ginning to fall, and even now the dreadful carts were rolling through
the streets. Her mind pursued them, looking for him among the
Condemned ; and then she clung closer to his real presence and
trembled more.

Her father, cheering her, showed a compassionate superiority to
this woman's weakness, which was wonderful to see. No garret, no
shoemaking, no One Hundred and Five, North Tower, now ! He had
accomplished the task he had set himself, his promise was redeemed,
he had saved Charles. Let them all lean upon him.

Their housekeeping was of a very frugal kind : not only because
that was the safest way of life, involving the least offence to the
people, but because they were not rich, and Charles, throughout his
imprisonment, had had to pay heavily for his bad food, and for his
guard, and towards the living of the poorer prisoners. Partly on this
account, and partly to avoid a domestic spy, they kept no servant ;
the citizen and citizeuess who acted as porters at the court-yard gate,
rendered them occasional service ; and Jerry (almost wholly trans-
ferred to them by Mr. Lorry) had become their daily retainer, and
had his bed there every night.

It was an ordinance of the Republic One and Indivisible of Liberty,
E juality. Fraternity, or Death, that on the door or door-post of every
house, the name of every inmate must be legibly inscribed in letters
of a certain size, at a certain convenient height from the ground. Mr.
Jerry Cruncher's name, therefore, duly embellished the door-post

Miss Pross and Mr. Cruncher. 557

down below ; and, as the afternoon shadows deepened, the owner of
that name himself appeared, from overlooking a painter whom Doctor
Manette had employed to add to the list the name of Charles Evre-
monde, called Darnay.

In the nniversal fear and distrust that darkened the time, all the
usual harmless ways of life were changed. In the Doctor's little
household, as in very many others, the articles of daily consumption
that were wanted were purchased every evening, in small quantities
and at various small shops. To avoid attracting notice, and to give
OS little occasion as possible for talk and envy, was the general desire.

For some months past. Miss Pross and Mr. Cruncher had discharged
the office of purveyors ; the former carrying the money ; the latter,
the basket. Every afternoon at about the time when the public lamps
were lighted, they fared forth on this duty, and made and brought
home such purchases as were needful. Although Miss Pross, through
her long association with a French family, might have known as much
of their language as of her own, if she had had a mind, she had no
mind in that direction ; consequently she knew no more of that
" nonsense " (as she was pleased to call it) than Mr, Cruncher did.
So her manner of marketing was to plump a noun-substantive at the
head of a shopkeeper without any introduction in the nature of an
article, and, if it happened not to be the name of the thing she wanted,
to look round for that thing, lay hold of it, and hold on by it until
the bargain was concluded. She always made a bargain for it, by
holding up, as a statement of its just price, one finger less than the
merchant held up, whatever his number might be.

" Now, Mr. Cruncher," said Miss Pross, whose eyes were red with
felicity ; " if you are ready, I am."

Jerry hoarsely professed himself at Miss Press's service. He had
worn all his rust off long ago, but nothing would file his spiky head
down.

" There's all manner of things wanted," said Miss Pross, " and we
shall have a precious time of it. We want wine, among the rest.
Nice toasts these Eedheads will be drinking, wherever we buy it."

" It will be much the same to your knowledge, miss, I should think,"
retorted Jerry, " whether they drink your health or the Old Un's."

" Who's he ? " said Miss Pross.

Mr. Cruncher, with some diffidence, explained himself as meaning
« Old Nick's."

" Ha ! " said Miss Pross, " it doesn't need an interpreter to explain
the meaning of these creatui-es. They have but one, and it's Midnight
Murder, and Mischief."

" Hush, dear ! Pray, pray, be cautious ! " cried Ijucie.

" Yes, yes, yes, I'll be cautious," said Miss Pross ; " but I may say
among ourselves, that I do hope there will be no oniony and tobaccoey
smotherings in the form of embracings all round, going on in the
streets. Now, Ladybird, never you stir from that fire till I come

558 A Tale of Two Cities.

back ! Take care of the dear husband you have recovered, and don't
move your pretty head from his shoulder as you have it now, till you
see mo again ! May I ask a question. Doctor Manette, before I go ? "

" I think you may take that liberty," the Doctor answered, smiling.

" For gracious sake, don't talk about Liberty ; we have quite enough
of that," said Miss Fross.

" Hush, dear 1 Again ? " Lucie remonstrated.
' " Well, my sweet," said Miss Press, nodding her head emphatically,
♦' the short and the long of it is, that I am a subject of His Most
Gracious Majesty King George the Third ; " Miss Press curtseyed at
the name ; " and as such, my maxim is, Confound their politics,
Fnistrate their knavish tricks, On him our hopes we fix, God save the
King!"

Mr. Cruncher, in an access of loyalty, growlingly repeated the
words after Miss Press, like somebody at church.

" I am glad you have so much of the Englishman in you, though I
wish you had never taken that cold in your voice," said Miss Pross,
approvingly. " But the question. Doctor Manette. Is there " — it
was the good creature's way to affect to make light of anything that
was a great anxiety with them all, and to come at it in this chance
manner — " is there any prospect yet, of our getting out of this place ? "

" I fear not yet. It would be dangerous for Charles yet."

" Heigh-ho-hum ! " said Miss Pross, cheerfully repressing a sigh as
she glanced at her darling's golden hair in the light of the fire, " then
we must have patience and wait : that's all. We must hold up our
heads and fight low, as my brother Solomon used to say. Now, Mr.
Cruncher! — Don't you move. Ladybird ! "

They went out, leaving Lucie, and her husband, her father, and the
child, by a bright fire. Mr. Lorry was expected back presently from
the Banking-house. Miss Pross had lighted the lamp, but had put
it aside in a corner, that they might enjoy the firelight undisturbed.
Little Lucie sat by her grandfather with her hands clasped through
his arm : and he, in a tone not rising much above a whisper, began to
tell her a story of a great and powerful Fairy who had opened a
prison-wall and let out a captive who had once done the Fairy a
service. All was subdued and quiet, and Lucie was more at ease
than she had been.

" What is that ? " she cried, all at once.

" My dear ! " said her father, stopping in his story, and laying his
hand on hers, " command yourself. What a disordered state you are
in! The least thing — nothing — startles youl You, your father's
daughter ! "

" I thought, my father," said Lucie, excusing herself, with a pale
face and in a faltering voice, "that I heard strange feet upon the
stairs."

" My love, the staircase is as still as Death."

As he said the word, a blow was struck upon the door.

\

li ^

.^'

The Emigrant retaken. 559

"Oh, father, father. What can this be I Hide Charles. Save
him I"

" My child," said the Doctor, rising, and laying his hand upon her
shoulder, " I "have saved him. What weakness is this, my dear ! Let
me go to the door."

Ho took the lamp in his hand, crossed the two intervening outer
rooms, and opened it. A rude clattering of feet over the floor, and
four rough men in red caps, armed with sabres and pistols, entered
the room.

" The Citizen Evromonde, called Darnay," said the firsi

" Who seeks him ? " answered Darnay.

" I seek him. Wo seek him. I know you, Evremonde ; I saw you
before the Tribunal to-day. You are again the prisoner of the
Republic."

The four surrounded him, where he stood with his wife and child
clinging to hira.

" Tell me how and why am I again a prisoner ? "

" It is enough that you return straight to the Conciergerie, and will
know to-morrow. You are summoned for to-morrow."

Dr. Manette, whom this visitation had so turned into stone, that he
stood with the lamp in his hand, as if he were a statue made to hold
it, moved after these words were spoken, put the lamp down, and
confronting the speaker, and taking him, not ungently, by the loose
front of his red woollen shirt, said :

" You know him, you have said. Do you know me ? "

" Yes, I know you. Citizen Doctor."

" We all know you, Citizen Doctor," said the other three.

He looked abstractedly from one to another, and said, in a lower
voice, after a pause :

" Will you answer his question to me then ? How does this
happen ? "

" Citizen Doctor," said the fii-st, reluctantly, " he has been denounced
to the Section of Saint Antoine. This citizen," pointing out the second
who had entered, " is from Saint Antoine."

The citizen here indicated nodded his head, and added :

" He is accused by Saint Antoine."

♦' Of what ? " asked the Doctor.

" Citizen Doctor," said the first, with his former reluctance, " ask
no more. If the Republic demands sacrifices from you, without doubt
you as a good patriot will be happy to make them. The Republic
goes before all. The People is supreme. Evremonde, we are pressed."

"One word," the Doctor entreated. "Will you tell me who de-
noimced him ? "

" It is against rule," answered the first ; " but you can ask Him of
Saint Antoine here."

The Doctor turned his eyes upon that man. Who moved uneasily
on his feet, rubbed his beard a little, and at length said ;

560 A Tale of Two Cities.

"Weill Truly it is against rule. But he is denounced — and
gravely — by the Citizen and Citizenoss Defarge. And by one
other."

« What other ? "

" Do yoM ask, Citizen Doctor ? "

" Yes'."

" Then," said he of Saiut Antoine, with a strange look, " you will
be answered to-morrow. Now. I am dumb ! "

CHAPTER VIII.

A HAND AT CARDS.

Happily unconscious of the new calamity at home, Miss Press threaded
her way along the narrow streets and crossed the river by the bridge
of the Pont-Neuf, reckoning in her mind the number of indispensable
purchases she had to make. Mr. Cruncher, with the basket, walked
at her side. They both looked to the right and to the left into most
of the shops they passed, had a wary eye for all gregarious assemblages
of people, and turned out of their road to avoid any very excited
group of talkers. It was a raw evening, and the misty river, blurred
to the eye with blazing lights and to the ear with harsh noises, showed
where the barges were stationed in which the smiths worked, making
guns for the Army of the Republic. Woe to the man who played
tricks with that Army, or got undeserved promotion in it ! Better for
him that his beard had never grown, for the National Razor shaved
him close.

Having purchased a few small articles of grocery, and a measure of
oil for the lamp, Miss Pross bethought herself of the wine they wanted.
After peeping into several wine-shops, she stopped at the sign of The
Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity, not far from the National
Palace, once (and twice) the Tuileries, where the aspect of things rather
took her fancy. It had a quieter look than any other place of the
same description they had passed, and, though red with patriotic caps,
was not so red as the rest. Sounding Mr. Cruncher, and finding him
of her opinion. Miss Pross resorted to The Good Republican Brutus
of Antiquity, attended by her cavalier.

Slightly observant of the smoky lights ; of the people, pipe in
mouth, playing with limp cards and yellow dominoes ; of the one
bare-breasted, bare-armed, soot-begrimed workman reading a journal
aloud, and of the others listening to him ; of the weapons worn, or
laid aside to be resumed ; of the two or three customers fallen forward
asleep, who in the popular high-shouldered shaggy black spencer
looked, in that attitude, like slumbering bears or dogs ; the two out-

^

^

\^

Aliss Pross makes a Discovery. 561

landish customers approached the connter, and showed what they
wauted.

As their wine was measuring out, a man parted from another man
in a corner, and rose to depart. In going, he had to face Miss Pross.
No sooner did he face her, than Miss Pross uttered a scream, and
clapped her hands.

In a moment, the whole company were on their feet. That some-
body was assassinated by somebody vindicating a difference of opinion
was the likeliest occurrence. Everybody looked to see somebody fall,
but only saw a man and a woman standing staring at each other ; the
man with all the outward aspect of a Frenchman and a thorough
Republican ; the woman, evidently English.

"What was said in this disappointing anti-climax, by the disciples of
the Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity, except that it was something
very voluble and loud, would have been as so much Hebrew or Chaldean
to Miss Pross and her protector, though they had been all ears. But,
they had no ears for anything in their surprise. For, it must bo
recorded, that not only was Miss Pross lost in amazement and agita-
tion, but, Mr. Cruncher — though it seemed on his own separate and
individual account — was in a state of the greatest wonder.

" What is the matter ? " said the man who had caused Miss Pross
to scream ; speaking in a vexed, abrupt voice (though in a low tone),
and in English.

" Oh, Solomon, dear Solomon ! " cried Miss Pross, clapping her
hands again. " After not setting eyes upon you or hearing of you for
80 long a time, do I find you here ! "

" Don't call me Solomon. Do you want to be the death of me ? "
asked the man, in a furtive, frightened way.

' Brother, brother! " cried Miss Pross, bursting into tears. " Have
I ever been so hard with you that you ask me such a cruel question ? "

" Then hold your meddlesome tongue," said Solomon, " and come
out, if you want to speak to me. Pay for your wine, and come out.
Who's this man ? "

Miss Pross, shaking her loving and dejected head at her by no
means affectionate brother, said through her tears, " Mr. Cruncher."

" Let him come out too," said Solomon. " Does he think me a
ghost?"

Apparently, Mr. Cruncher did, to judge from his looks. He said
not a word, however, and Miss Pross, exploring the depths cf her
reticule through her tears, with great difficulty paid for her wino. As
she did so, Solomon turned to the followers of the Good Republican
Bmtus of Antiquity, and offered a few words of explanation in the
French language, which caused them all to relapse into their former
places and pursuits.

" Now," said Solomon, stopping at the dark street corner, " what do
you want ? "

" How dreadfully unkind in a brother nothing has ever turned my

2o

562 A Tale of Two Cities.

lovo away from ! " cried Miss Pross, " to give me such a greeting, and
show me no affection."

" There. Con-found it ! There," said Solomon, making a dab at
Miss Press's lips with his own. " Now are you content ? "

Miss Pross only shook her head and wept in silence.

*' If you expect me to be surprised," said her brother Solomon, " I
am not surprised ; I knew you were here ; I know of most people wlio
are here. If you really don't want to endanger my existence — which
I half believe you do — go your ways as soon as possible, and let mo
go mine. I am busy. I am an official."

" My English brother Solomon," mourned Miss Pross, casting up
her tear-fraught eyes, " that had the makings in him of one of the
best and greatest of men in his native country, an official among
foreigners, and such foreigners ! I would almost sooner have seen
the dear boy lying in his "

" I said so ! " cried her brother, interrupting. " I knew it. You
want to be the death of me. I shall be rendered Suspected, by my
own sister. Just as I am getting on ! "

" The gracious and merciful Heavens forbid ! " cried Miss Pross.
" Far rather would I never see you again, dear Solomon, though I
have ever loved you truly, and ever shall. Say but one affectionate
word to me, and tell me there is nothing angry or estranged between
us, and I will detain you no longer."

Good Miss Pross ! As if the estrangement between them had come
of any culpability of liers. As if Mr. Lorry had not known it for a
fact, years ago, in the quiet corner in Soho, that this precious brother
had spent her money and left her !

He was saying the affectionate word, however, with a far more
grudging condescension and patronage than he could have shown if
their relative merits and positions had been reversed (which is in-
variably the case, all the world over), when Mr. Cruncher, touching
him on the shoulder, hoarsely and unexpectedly interposed with the
following singular question :

" I say ! Might I ask the favour ? As to whether your name is
John Solomon, or Solomon John ? "

The official turned towards him with sudden distrust. He had not
previously uttered a word.

" Come ! " said Mr. Cruncher. " Speak out, you know." (Which,
by the way, was more than he could do himself.) " John Solomon,
or Solomon John ? She calls you Solomon, and she must know, being
your sister. And I know you're John, you know. Which of the two
goes first ? And regarding that name of Pi'oss, likewise. That warn't
your name over the water."

" What do you mean ? "

*' Well, I don't know all I mean, for I can't call to mind what your
name was, over the water."

"No?"

Sydney Carton and Mr. Barsad. 563

" No. But I'll Bwear it was a name of two syllables."

« Indeed ? "

"Yes. T'other one's was one syllable. I know you. You was a
spy-witness at the Bailey. What, in the name of the Father of Lies,
own father to yourself, was you called at that time ? "

" Barsad," said another voice, striking in.

" That's the name for a thousand pound ! " cried Jerry.

The speaker who struck in, was Sydney Carton. He had his hands
behind him under the skirts of his riding-coat, and he stood at Mr.
Cruncher's elbow as negligently as he might have stood at the Old
Bailey itself.

" Don't be alarmed, my dear Miss Press. I arrived at Mr. Lorry's,
to his surprise, yesterday evening; we agreed that I would not
present myself elsewhere imtil all was well, or unless I could be use-
ful ; I present myself here, to beg a little talk with your brother. I
wish you had a better employed brother than Mr. Barsad. I wish for
your sake Mr. Barsad was not a Sheep of the Prisons."

Sheep was a cant word of the time for a spy, under the gaolers.
The spy, who was pale, turned paler, and asked him how he dared

" I'll tell you," said Sydney. " I lighted on you, Mr. Barsad,
coming out of the prison of the Conciergerie whilst I was contem-
plating the walls, an hour or more ago. You have a face to be
remembered, and I remember faces well. Made curious by seeing
you in that connection, and having a reason, to which you are no
stranger, for associating you with the misfortunes of a friend now very
unfortunate, I walked in your direction. I walked into the wine-shop
here, close after you, and sat near you. I had no difficulty in deducing
from your unreserved conversation, and the rumour openly going about
among your admirers, the nature of your calHng. And gradually,
what I had done at random, seemed to shape itself into a purpose, Mr.
Barsad."

" What purpose ? " the spy asked.

" It would be troublesome, and might be dangerous, to explain in
the street. Could you favour me, in confidence, with some minutes of
your company — at the office of Tellson's Bank, for instance ? "

" Under a threat ? "

*' Oh ! Did I say that ? "

" Then, why should I go there ? "

" Really, Mr. Barsad, I can't say, if you can't."

" Do you mean that you won't say, sir ? '* the spy irresolutely asked.

" You apprehend me very clearly, Mr. Barsad. I won't."

Carton's negligent recklessness of manner came powerfully in aid
of his quickness and skill, in such a business as he had in his secret
mind, and with such a man as he had to do with. His practised eye
saw it, and made the most of it.

" Now, I told you so," said the spy, casting a reproachful look at
his sister ; " if any trouble comes of this, it's your doing."

564 A Tale of Two Cities.

" Come, come, Mr. Barsad ! " exclaimed Sydney. " Don't be im-
grateful. But for my great respect for your feister, I might not have
led up so pleasantly to a little proposal that I wish to make for our
mutual satisfaction. Do you go with me to the Bank ? "

" I'll hear what you have got to say. Yes, I'll go with you."

" I propose that we first conduct your sister safely to the corner of
her own street. Let me take your ann, Miss Pross. This is not a
good city, at this time, for you to be out in, unprotected ; and as your
escort knows Mr. Barsad, I will invite him to Mr. Lorry's with us.
Are we ready ? Come then ! "

Miss Pross recalled soon afterwards, and to the end of her life
remembered, that as she pressed her hands on Sydney's arm and
looked up in his face, imploring him to do no hurt to Solomon, there
was a braced purpose in the arm and a kind of inspiration in the eyes,
which not only contradicted his light manner, but changed and raised
the man. She was too much occupied then with fears for the brother
who 80 little deserved her affection, and with Sydney's friendly
reassurances, adequately to heed what she observed.

They left her at the corner of the street, and Carton led the way to
Mr. Lorry's, which was within a few minutes' walk. John Barsad,
or Solomon Pross, walked at his side.

Mr. Lorry had just finished his dinner, and was sitting before
a cheery little log or two of fire — perhaps looking into their bla/e for
the picture of that younger elderly gentleman from Tellson's, who
had looked into the red coals at the Eoyal George at Dover, now a
good many years ago. He turned his head as they entered, and
showed the surprise with which he saw a stranger.

" Miss Pross's brother, sir," said Sydney. " Mr. Barsad."

" Barsad ? " repeated the old gentleman, " Barsad ? I have an
association with the name — and with the face."

"I told you you had a remarkable face, Mr. Barsad," observed
Carton, coolly. " Pray sit down."

As he took a chair himself, he supplied the link that Mr. Lorry
wanted, by saying to him with a frown, " Witness at that trial." Mr.
Lorry immediately remembered, and regarded his new visitor with an
undisguised look of abhorrence.

" Mr. Barsad has been recognized by Miss Pross as the affectionate
brother you have heard of," said Sydney, " and has acknowledged the
relationship. I pass to worse news. Darnay has been arrested
again."

Struck with consternation, the old gentleman exclaimed, "What
do you tell me ! I left him safe and free within these two hours, and
am about to return to him ! "

" Arrested for all that. When was it done, Mr. Barsad ? "

" Just now, if at all."

" Mr. Barsad is the best authority possible, sir," said Sydney, " and
I have it from Mr. Barsad's communication to a friend and brother

Sydney Carton runs over his Cards. 565

Sheep over a bottle of wine, that the arrest has taken place. He left
the messengers at the gate, and saw them admitted by the porter.
There is no earthly doubt that he is retaken."

Mr. Lorry's business eye read in the speaker's face that it was loss
of time to dwell upon the point. Confused, but sensible that some-
thing might depend on his presence of mind, he commanded himself,
and was silently attentive.

*' Now, I trust," said Sydney to him, " that the name and influence
of Doctor Manette may stand him in as good stead to-morrow — you
said he would be before the Tribunal again to-morrow, Mr. Bar-
sad? "

" Yes ; I believe so."

" — In as good stead to-morrow as to-day. But it may not be so.
I own to you, I am shaken, Mr. Lorry, by Doctor Manette's not having
had the power to prevent this arrest."

" He may not have known of it beforehand," said Mr. Lorry.

" But that very circumstance would be alarming, when we remember
how identified he is with his son-in-law."

" That's true," Mr. Lorry acknowledged, with his troubled hand at
his chin, and his troubled eyes on Carton.

" Li short," said Sydney, " this is a desperate time, when desperate
games are played for desperate stakes. Let the Doctor play the
winning game ; I will play the losing one. No man's life here is
worth purchase. Anyone carried home by the people to-day, may be
condemned to-morrow. Now, the stake I have resolved to play for,
in case of the worst, is a friend in the Conciergerie. And the friend
I purpose to myself to win, is Mr. Barsad."

" You need have good cards, sir," said the spy.

" I'll ran them over. I'll see what I hold. — Mr. Lorry, you know
what a brute I am ; I wish you'd give me a little brandy."

It was put before him, and he drank off a glassful — drank off
another glassful — pushed the bottle thoughtfully away.

" Mr. Barsad," he went on, in the tone of one who really was
looking over a hand at cards: "Sheep of the prisons, emissary of
Republican committees, now turnkey, now prisoner, always spy and
secret informer, so much the more valuable here for being English
that an Englishman is less open to suspicion of subornation in those
characters than a Frenchman, represents himself to his employers
under a false name. That's a very good card. Mr. Barsad, now in
the employ of the republican French government, was formerly in the
employ of the aristocratic English government, the enemy of Franco
and freedom. That's an excellent card. Inference clear as day in
this region of suspicion, that Mr. Barsad, still in the pay of the
aristocratic English government, is the spy of Pitt, the treacherous foe
of the Republic crouching in its bosom, the English traitor and agent
of all mischief so much spoken of and so difficult to find. That's a
card not to be beaten. Have you followed my hand, Mr. Barsad ? "

566 A Tale of Two Cities.

"Not to understand your play," returned the spy, somewliat
uneasily.

" I play my Ace, Denunciation of Mr. Barsad to tlie nearest Section
Committee. Look over your hand, Mr. Barsad, and see what you
have. Don't hurry."

He drew the bottle near, poured out another glassful of brandy,
and drank it off. He saw that the spy was fearful of his drinking
himself into a fit state for the immediate denunciation of him. Seeing
it, he poured out and drank another glassful.

" Look over your hand carefully, Mr. Barsad. Take time.

It was a poorer hand than he suspected. Mr. Barsad saw losing
cards in it that Sydney Carton knew nothing of. Thrown out of his
honourable employment in England, through too much unsuccessful
hard swearing there — not because he was not wanted there ; our
English reasons for vaunting our superiority to secrecy and spies are
of very modern date — he knew that he had crossed the Channel, and
accepted service in Frr.nce : first, as a tempter and an eavesdropper
among his own countrymen there : gradually as a tempter and an
eavesdropper among ihe natives. He knew that under the overthrown
government he had been a spy upon Saint Antoine and Defarge's
wine-shop; had received from the watchful police such heads of
information concerning Doctor Manette's imprisonment, release, and
history, as should serve him for an introduction to familiar convorsa-
tion with the Defarges ; and tried them on Madame Defarge, and had
broken down with them signally. He always remembered with fear
and trembling, that that terrible woman had knitted when he talked
with her, and had looked ominously at him as her fingers moved.
He had since seen her, in the Section of Saint Antoine, over and over
again produce her knitted registers, and denounce people whose lives
the guillotine then surely swallowed up. He knew, as everyone
employed as he was did, that he was never safe ; that flight was
impossible ; that he was tied fast under the shadow of the axe ; and
that in spite of his utmost tergiversation and treachery in furtherance
of the reigning terror, a word might bring it down upon him. Once
denounced, and on such grave grounds as had just now been suggested
to his mind, he foresaw that the dreadful woman of whose unrelenting
character he had seen many proofs, would produce against him that
fatal register, and would quash his last chance of life. Besides that
all secret men are men soon terrified, here were surely cards enough
of one black suit, to justify the holder in growing rather livid as he
turned them over.

. " You scarcely seem to like your hand," said Sydney, with the
greatest composure. " Do you play ? "

" I think, sir," said the spy, in the meanest manner, as he turned to
Mr. Lorry, " I may appeal to a gentleman of your years and benevolence,
*o put it to this other gentleman, so much your junior, whether he
can under any circumstances reconcile it to his station to play that

Sydney Carton wins the Game. 567

Aco of which he has Bpuken. I admit that J am a Bpy, and that it is
considered a discreditable station — though it must be filled by some-
body ; but this gentleman is no spy, and why should ho so demean
himself as to make himself one ? "

" I play my Ace, Mr. Barsad," said Carton, taking the answer on
himself, and looking at his watch, " without any scrapie, in a very
few minutes."

"I should have hoped, gentlemen both," said the spy, always
striving to hook Mr. Lorry into the discussion, " that your respect
for my sister "

" I could not better testify my respect for your sister than by finally
relieving her of her brother," said Sydney Carton.

« You think not, sir ? "

" I have thoroughly made up my mind about it."

The smooth manner of the spy, curiously in dissonance with his
ostentatiously rough dress, and probably with his usual demeanoui",
received such a check fi'om the inscrutability of Carton, — who was a
mystery to wiser and honester men than he, — that it faltered here
and failed him. While he was at a loss. Carton said, resuming his
former air of contemplating cards :

" And indeed, now I think again, I have a strong impression that I
have another good card here, not yet enumerated. That friend and
fellow-Sheep, who spoke of himself as pasturing in the country
prisons ; who was he ? "

" French. You don't know him," said the spy, quickly.

" French, eh ? " repeated Carton, musing, and not appearing to
notice him at all, though he echoed his word. " Well ; he may be."

" Is, I assure you," said the spy ; " though it's not important."

"Though it's not important," repeated Carton, in the same
mechanical way — " though it's not important No, it's not impor-
tant. No. Yet I know the face."

" I think not. I am sure not. It can't be," said the spy.

"It— can't — be," muttered Sydney Carton, retrospectively, and
filling his gltiss (which fortunately was a small one) again. " Can't
— be. Spoke good French. Yet like a foreigner, I thought ? "

" Provincial," said the spy.

" No. Foreign ! " cried Cai-ton, striking his open hand on the
table, as a light broke clearly on his mind. " Cly ! Disguised, but
the same man. We had that man before us at the Old Bailey."

"Now, there you are hasty, sir," said Barsad, with a smile that
gave his aquiline nose an extra inclination to one side ; " there you
really give me an advantage over you. Cly (who I will unreservedly
admit, at this distance of time, was a partner of mine) has been dead
several years. I attended him in his last illness. He was buried in
London, at the church of Saint Pancras-in-the-Fields. His un-
popularity with the blackguard multitude at the moment prevented
my following his remains, but I helped to lay him in his coffin."

568 A Tale of Two Cities.

Here, Mr. Lorry became aware, from where he sat, of a mofet
remarkable goblin shadow on the wall. Tracing it to its source, he
discovered it to be caused by a sudden extraordinary rising and
stiffening of all the risen and stiff hair on Mr. Cruncher's head.

" Let us be reasonable," said the spy, " and let us be fair. To show
you how mistaken you are, and what an unfounded assumption youi's
is, I will lay before you a certificate of Cly's burial, which I happen
to have carried in my pocket-book," with a hurried hand he produced
and opened it, " ever since. There it is. Oh, look at it, look at it !
You may take it in your hand : it's no forgery."

Here, Mr. Lorry perceived the reflection on the wall to elongate,
and Mr. Cruncher rose and stepped forward. His hair could not have
been more violently on end, if it had been that moment dressed by the
Cow with the crumpled horn in the house that Jack built.

Unseen by the spy, Mr. Cruncher stood at his side, and touched him
on the shoulder like a ghostly bailiff.

" That there Roger Cly, master," said Mr. Cnancher, with a taciturn
and ii'on-bound visage. " So you put him in his coflin ? "

« I did."

« Who took him out of it ? "

Barsad leaned back in his chair, and stammered, " What do you
mean?"

" I mean," said Mr. Cruncher, " that he warn't never in it. No !
Not he ! I'll have my head took off, if he was ever in it."

The spy looked round at the two gentlemen ; they both looked in
unspeakable astonishment at Jerry.

" I tell you," said Jerry, " that you buried paving-stones and eartli
in that there coffin. Don't go and tell me that you buried Cly. It
was a take in. Me and two more knows it."

" How do you know it ? "

" What's that to you ? Ecod ! " growled Mr. Cruncher, " it's jou I
have got a old grudge again, is it, with your shameful impositions
upon tradesmen ! I'd catch hold of your throat and choke you for
half a guinea."

Sydney Carton, who, with Mr. Lorry, had been lost in amazement
at this turn of the business, here requested Mr. Cruncher to moderate
and explain himself,

" At another time, sir," he returned, evasively, " the present time
is ill-conwenient for explainin'. What I stand to, is, that he knows
well wot that there Cly was never in that there coffin. Let him say
he was, in so much as a word of one syllable, and I'll either catch
hold of his throat and choke him for half a guinea ; " Mr. Cruncher
dwelt upon this as quite a liberal offer ; " or I'll out and announce
him."

" Humph ! I see one thing," said Carton. " I hold another card,
Mr. Barsad. Impossible, here in raging Paris, with Suspicion filling
the air, for you to outlive denunciation, when you are in commuuica-

Coming to the Point 569

tion witli another aristocratic spy of the samo antecedents as yourself,
who, moreover, has the mystery abont him of having feigned death
and come to life again! A plot in the prisons, of the foreigner
against the Republic. A strong card — a certain Guillotine cardl
Do you play ? "

" No ! " returned the spy. " I throw up. I confess that we wero
BO unpopular with the outrageous mob, that 1 only got away from
England at the risk of being ducked to death, and that Cly was so
ferreted up and down, that he never would have got away at all but
for that sham. Though how this man knows it was a sham, is a
wonder of wonders to me."

•' Never you trouble your head about this man," retorted the con-
tentious Mr. Cruncher ; " you'll have trouble enough with giving your
attention to that gentleman. And look here ! Once more 1 " — Mr.
Cruncher could not be restrained from making rather an ostentatious
parade of his liberality — " I'd catch hold of your throat and choke
you for half a guinea."

The Sheep of the prisons turned from him to Sydney Carton, and
said, with more decision, " It has come to a point. I go on duty soon,
and can't overstay my time. You told me you had a proposal ; what
is it ? Now, it is of no use asking too much of me. Ask me to do
anything in my office, putting my head in great extra danger, and I
had better trust my life to the chances of a refusal than the chances
of consent. In short, I should make that choice. You talk of despe-
i-ation. We are all desperate here. Eememberl I may denounce
you if I think proper, and I can swear my way through stone walls,
and so can others. Now, what do you want with me ? "

" Not very much. You are a turnkey at the Conciergerie ? "

" I tell you once for all, there is no such thing as an escape
possible," said the spy, firmly.

" Why need you tell me what I have not asked ? You are a
turnkey at the Conciergerie ? "

" I am sometimes."

" You can be when you choose ? "

" I can pass in and out when I choose."

Sydney Carton filled another glass with brandy, poured it slowly
out upon the hearth, and watched it as it dropped. It being all spent,
he said, rising :

" So far, we have spoken before these two, because it was as well
that the merits of the cards should not rest solely between you and
me. Come into the dark room here, and let us have one final word
alone."

CHAPTER IX.

THE GAME MADE.

Whil3 Sydney Carton and the Sheep of the prisons were in the
adjoining dark room, speaking so low that not a sound was heard, Mr.
Lorry looked at Jerry in considerable doubt and mistrust. That
honest tradesman's manner of receiving the look, did not inspire con-
fidence ; he changed the leg on which he rested, as often as if he had
fifty of those limbs, and were trying them all ; he examined his
finger-nails with a very questionable closeness of attention ; and
whenever Mr. Lorry's eye caught his, he was taken with that peculiar
kind of short cough requiring the hollow of a hand before it, which
is seldom, if ever, known to be an infirmity attendant on perfect
openness of character.

" Jerry," said Mr. Lorry. " Come here."

Mr. CxTincher came forward sideways, with one of his shoulders in
advance of him.

" What have you been, besides a messenger ? "

After some cogitation, accompanied with an intent look at his patron,
Mr. Cruncher conceived the luminous idea of replying, " Agricultooral
character."

" My mind misgives mo much," said Mr. Lorry, angrily shaking a
forefinger at him, " that you have used the respectable and great
house of Tellson's as a blind, and that you have had an unlaAvful
occupation of an infamous description. If you have, don't expect me
to befriend you when you get back to England. If you have, don't
expect me to keep your secret. Tellson's shall not be imposed upon."

" I hope, sir," pleaded the abashed Mr. Cruncher, " that a gentle-
man like yourseK wot I've had the honour of odd jobbing till I'm
grey at it, would think twice about harming of me, even if it wos so —
I don't say it is, but even if it wos. And which it is to be took into
account that if it wos, it wouldn't, even then, be all o' one side.
There'd be two sides to it. There might be medical doctors at the
present hour, a picking up their guineas where a honest tradesman
don't pick up his fardens — fardens! no, nor yet his half fardens —
half fardens ! no,, nor yet his quarter — a banking away like smoke at
Tellson's, and a cocking their medical eyes at that tradesman on the
sly, a going in and going out to their own carriages — ah ! equally like
smoke, if not more so. Well, that 'ud be imposing, too, on Tellson's.
For you cannot sarse the goose and not the gander. And hero's Mrs.
Cruncher, or leastways wos in the Old England times, and would be
to-morrow, if cause given, a floppin' again the business to that degree
as is ruinating — stark ruinating ! Whereas them medical doctors'
wives don't flop— catch 'em at it ! Or, if they flop, their floppings goes

Mr. Cruncliet^s Protest. 571

in favour of more patients, and how can you rightly have one without
the t'other ? Then, wot with undertakers, and wot with parish
clerks, and wot with sextons, and wot with private watchmen (all
awaricious and all in it), a man wouldn't get much by it, even if it
wos so. And wot little a man did get, would never prosper with him,
Mr. Lorry. He'd never have no good of it ; he'd want all along to be
out of the line, if he could see his way out, being once in — even if it
wos so."

" Ugh ! " cried Mr. Lorry, rather relenting, nevertheless. " I am
shocked at the sight of you."

"Now, what I would humbly offer to you, sir," pursued Mr.
Cruncher, " even if it wos so, which I don't say it is "

" Don't prevaricate,' said Mr. Lorry.

" No, I will not, sir," returned Mr. Cruncher, as if nothing were
further from his thoughts or practice — " which I don't say it is — wot
I v/ould humbly offer to you, sir, would be this. Upon that there
stool, at that there Bar, sets that there boy of mine, brought up and
growed up to be a man, wot will errand you, message you, general-
light-job you, till your heels is where your head is, if such should bo
your wishes. If it wos so, which I still don't say it is (for I will not
prewaricate to you, sir), let that there boy keep his father's place, and
take care of his mother ; don't blow upon that boy's father — do not do
it, sir — and let that father go into the line of the reg'lar diggin', and
make amends for what he would have un-dug — if it wos so — by
diggin' of 'em in with a will, and with conwictions respectin' the futur*
keepin' of 'em safe. That, Mr. Lorry," said Mr. Cruncher, wiping
his forehead with his arm, as an announcement that he had arrived at
the peroration of his discourse, " is wot I would respectfully offer to
you, sir. A man don't see all this here a goin' on dreadful round
him, in the way of Subjects without heads, dear me, plentiful enough
fur to bring the price down to porterage and hardly that, without
havin' his serious thoughts of things. And these here woidd be mine,
if it wos so, entreatin* of you fur to bear in mind that wot I said just
now, I up and said in the good cause when I might have kep' it back."

" That at least is true," said Mr. LoiTy. " Say no more now. It
may be that I shall yet stand your friend, if you deserve it, and repent
in action — not in words. I want no more words."

Mr. Cruncher knuckled his forehead, as Sydney Carton and the spy
returned from the dark room. " Adieu, Mr. Barsad," said the former ;
" our arrangement thus made, you have nothing to fear from me."

He sat down in a chair on the hearth, over against Mr. Lorry.
When they were alone, Mr. Lorry asked him what he had done ?

" Not much. If it should go ill with the prisoner, I have ensured
access to him, once."

Mr. Lorry's countenance fell.

" It is all I could do," said Carton. " To propose too much,
would be to put this man's head under the axe, and, as he liimself

572 A Tale of Tzvo Cities.

said, nothing worse could happen to him if he were denounced. It
was obviously the weakness of the position. There is no help
for it."

" But access to him," said Mr. Lorry, " if it should go ill before the
Tribunal, will not save him."

" I never said it would."

Mr. Lorry's eyes gradually sought the fire ; his sympathy with his
darling, and the heavy disappointment of this second arrest, gradually
weakened them ; he was an old man now, overborne with anxiety of
late, and his tears fell.

"You are a good man and a true friend," said Carton, in an altered
voice. " Forgive me if I notice that you are affected. I could not see
my father weep, and sit by, careless. And I could not respect your
sorrow more, if you were my father. You are free from that mis-
fortune, however."

Though he said the last words, with a slip into his usual manner,
there was a true feeling and respect both in his tone and in his touch,
that Mr. Lorry, who had never seen the better side of him, was
wholly unprepared for. He gave him his hand, and Carton gently
pressed it.

" To return to poor Darnay," said Carton. " Don't tell Her of this
interview, or this arrangement. It would not enable Her to go to see
him. She might think it was contrived, in case of the worst, to
convey to him the means of anticipating the sentence."

Mr. Lorry had not thought of that, and he looked quickly at Carton
to see if it were in his mind. It seemed to be ; he returned the look,
and evidently understood it.

" She might think a thousand things," Carton said, " and any of
them would only add to her trouble. Don't speak of me to her. As
I said to you when I first came, I had better not see her, I can put
my hand out, to do any little helpful work for her that my hand can
find to do, without that. You are going to her, I hope ? She must
be very desolate to-night."

" I am going now, directly."

" I am glad of that. She has such a strong attachment to you and
reliance on you. How does she look ? "

"Anxious and unhappy, but very beautiful."

" Ah ! "

It was a long, grieving sound, like a sigh — almost like a sob. It
attracted Mr. Lorry's eyes to Carton's face, which was turned to the
fire. A light, or a shade (the old gentleman could not have said
which), passed from it as swiftly as a change will sweep over a hill-
side on a wild bright day, and he lifted his foot to put back one of the
little flaming logs, which was tumbling forward. He wore the white
riding-coat and top boots, then in vogue, and the light of the fire
touching their light surfaces made him look very pale, with his long
brown hair, all untrimmed, hanging loose about him. His indifference

Sydney Carton and Mr. Lorry. 573

to fire was sufficiently remarkable to elicit a word of remonstrance
from Mr. Lorry ; his boot was still upon the hot embers of the flaming
log, when it had broken under the weight of his foot.

" I forgot it," he said.

Mr Lorry's eyes were again attracted to his face. Taking note of
the wasted air which clouded the naturally handsome features, and
having the expression of prisoners' faces fresh in his mind, he was
strongly reminded of that expression.

" And your duties here have drawn to an end, sir ? " said Carton,
turning to him.

" Yes. As I was telling you last night when Lucie came in so un-
expectedly, I have at lengthy done all that I can do here. I hoped to
have left them in perfect safety, and then to have quitted Paris. I
have my Leave to Pass. I was ready to go."

They were both silent.

" Yours is a long life to look back upon, sir ? " said Carton,
wistfully.

" I am in my seventy-eighth year."

" You have been useful all your life ; steadily and constantly occu-
pied ; trusted, respected, and looked up to ? "

" I have been a man of business, ever since I have been a man.
Indeed, I may say that I was a man of business when a boy."

"See what a place you fill at seventy-eight. How many people
will miss you when you leave it empty ! "

"A solitary old bachelor," answered Mr. Lorry, shaking his
head. " There is nobody to weep for me."

" How can you say that ? Wouldn't She weep for you ? Wouldn't
her child ? "

" Yes, yes, thank God. I didn't quite mean what I said."

" It w a thing to thank God for ; is it not ? "

" Surely, surely."

" If you could say, with truth, to your own solitary heart, to-night,
' I have secured to myself the love and attachment, the gratitude or
respect, of no human creature ; I have won myself a tender place in
no regard ; I have done nothing good or serviceable to be remembered
by ! ' your seventy-eight years would be seventy-eight heavy curses ;
would they not ? "

" You say truly, Mr. Carton ; I think they would be."

Sydney turned his eyes again upon the fire, and, after a silence of
a few moments, said :

" I should like to ask you : — Does your childhood seem far oflf ? Do
the days when you sat at your mother's knee, seem days of very long
ago ? "

Responding to his softened manner, Mr. Lorry answered :

" Twenty years back, yes ; at this time of my life, no. For, as I
draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and
nearer to the beginning. It seems to be one of the kind smoothings

574 -^ Tale of Tivo Cities.

and preparings of the way. My heart is touclied now, by many
remembrances that had long fallen asleep, of my pretty young mother
(and I so old 1 ), and by many associations of the days when what wo
call the World was not so real with me, and my faults were not con-
firmed in me."

" I understand the feeling ! " exclaimed Carton, with a bright flush.
" And you are the better for it ? "

" I hope so."

Carton terminated the conversation hero, by rising to help him on
with his outer coat; "but you," said Mr. Lorry, reverting to the
theme, " you are young."

" Yes," said Carton. " P am not old, but my young way was neyer
the way to age. Enough of me,"

" And of me, I am sure," said Mr. Lorry. " Are you going out ? "

"I'll walk with you to her gate. You know my vagabond and
restless habits. If I should prowl about the streets a long time, don't
be uneasy ; I shall reappear in the morning. You go to the Court
to-morrow ? "

" Yes, unhappily."

" I shall be there, but only as one of the crowd. My Spy will find
a place for me. Take my arm, sir."

Mr. Lorry did so, and they went down-stairs and out in the streets.
A few minutes brought them to Mr. Lorry's destination. Carton left
him there ; but lingered at a little distance, and turned back to the
gate again when it was shut, and touched it. He had heard of her
going to the prison every day. " She came out here," he said, looking
about him, •' turned this way, must have trod on these stones often.
Let me follow in her steps."

It was ten o'clock at night when he stood before the prison of La
Force, where she had stood hundreds of times. A little wood-sawyer,
having closed his shop, was smoking his pipe at his shop-door.

" Good-night, citizen," said Sydney Carton, pausing in going by ;
foi*, the man eyed him inquisitively.

" Good-night, citizen."

" How goes the Eepublic ? "

" You mean the Guillotine. Not ill. Sixty-three to-day. We sliall
mount to a hundred soon. Samson and his men complain sometimes,
of being exhausted. Ha, ha, ha ! Ho is so droll, that Samson. Such
a Barber ! "

" Do you often go to see him "

" Shave ? Always. Every day. What a barber ! You have seer,
him at work ? "

" Never."

" Go and see him when he has a good batch. Figure this to your-
self, citizen ; he shaved the sixty-three to-day, in less than two pipes !
Less than two pipes. Word of honour ! "

As the grinning little man held out the pipe he was smoking, to

The Shadow of Death. 575

explain how he timed the executioner, Carton was bo Bensible of a
rising desire to strike the life out of him, that he turned away.

" But yon are not English," said the wood-sawyer, " though you
wear English dress ? "

" Yes," said Carton, pausing again, and answering over his shoulder.

" You speak like a Fronchman."

" I am an old student here."

" Aha, a perfect Fronchman ! Good-night, Englishman."

" Good-night, citizen."

" But go and see that droll dog," the little man persisted, calling
after him. " And take a pipe with you ! "

Sydney had not gone far out of sight, when he stopped in the middle
of the street under a glimmering lamp, and wrote with his pencil on a
scrap of paper. Then, traversing with the decided step of one who
remembered the way well, several dark and dirty streets— much
dirtier than usual, for the best public thoroughfares remained un-
cleansed in those times of terror — he stopped at a chemist's shop,
which tho owner was closing with his own hands. A small, dim
crooked shop, kept in a tortuous, uphill thoroughfare, by a small, dim,
crooked man.

Giving this citizen, too, good-night, as he confronted him at his
counter, he laid the scrap of paper before him. " "Whew ! " the chemist
whistled softly, as he read it. " Hi ! hi ! hi ! "

Sydney Carton took no heed, and the chemist said :

" For you, citizen ? "

« For me."

" You will be careful to keep them separate, citizen ? You know
tho consequences of mixing them ? "

« Perfectly."

Certain small packets were made and given to him. Ho put them,
one by one, in the breast of his inner coat, counted out tho money for
them, and deliberately left tho shop. " There is nothing more to do,"
said he, glancing upward at the moon, "nntil to-morrow. I can't
sleep."

It was not a reckless manner, the manner in which he said these
words aloud under the fast-sailing clouds, nor was it more expressive
of negligence than defiance. It was the settled manner of a tired man,
who had wandered and struggled and got lost, but who at length
struck into his road and saw its end.

Long ago, when he had been famous among his earliest competitors
as a youth of great promise, ho had followed his father to the grave.
His motlier had died, years before. These solemn words, which had
been read at his father's grave, arose in his mind as he went down the
dark streets, among tho heavy shadows, with the moon and the clouds
Bailing on high above him. " I am the resurrection and the life, saith
the Lord : he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he
live : and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die."

57^ A Tale of Two Cities.

In a city dominated by the axe, alone at night, with natural sorrow
rising in him for the sixty-three who had been that day put to death,
and for to-morrow's victims then awaiting their doom in the prisons,
and still of to-morrow's and to-morrow's, the chain of association that
brought the words home, like a rusty old ship's anchor from the deep,
might have been easily found. He did not seek it, but repeated them
and went oh.

With a solemn interest in the lighted windows where the people
were going to rest, forgetful through a few calm hours of the horrors
surrounding them ; in the towers of the churches, where no prayers
were said, for the popular revulsion had even travelled that length of
self-destruction from years of priestly impostors, plunderers, and
profligates ; in the distant burial-places, reserved, as they wrote upon
the gates, for Eternal Sleep ; in the abounding gaols ; and in the
streets along which the sixties rolled to a death which had become so
common and material, that no sorrowful story of a haunting Spirit
ever arose among the people out of all the working of the Guillotine ;
with a solemn interest in the whole life and death of the city settling
down to its short nightly pause in fury ; Sydney Carton crossed the
Seine again for the lighter streets.

Few coaches were abroad, for riders in coaches were liable to be
suspected, and gentility hid its head in red nightcaps, and put on heavy
shoes, and trudged. But, the theatres were all well filled, and the
people poured cheerfully out as he passed, and went chatting home.
At one of the theatre doors, there was a little girl with a mother,
looking for a way across the street through the mud. He carried the
child over, and before the timid arm was loosed from his neck asked
her for a kiss.

"I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live : and whoso-
ever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die."

Now, that the streets were quiet, and the night wore on, the words
were in the echoes of his feet, and were in the air. Perfectly calm
and steady, he sometimes repeated them to himself as he walked ; but,
he heard them always.

The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge listening to
the water as it splashed the river-walls of the Island of Paris, where
the picturesque confusion of houses and cathedral shone bright in the
light of the moon, the day came coldly, looking like a dead face out
of the sky. Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, turned
pale and died, and for a little while it seemed as if Creation were
delivered over to Death's dominion.

But, the glorious sun, rising, seemed to strike those words, that
burden of the night, straight and warm to his heart in its long bright
rays. And looking along them, with reverently shaded eyes, a bridge
of light appeared to span the air between him and the sun, while th^
river sparkled under it.

Again before the Tribunal. 577

The strong tide, so swift, so deep, and certain, was like a congenial
friend, in the morning stillness. He walked by the stream, far from
the houses, and in the light and warmth of the sun fell asleep on the
bank. When he awoke and was afoot again, he lingered there yet a
little longer, watching an eddy that turned and turned purposeless,
until the stream absorbed it, and carried it on to the sea. — " Like me I "

A trading-boat, with a sail of the softened colour of a dead leaf, then
glided into his view, floated by him, and died away. As its silent
track in the water disappeared, the prayer that had broken up out of
his heart for a merciful consideration of all his poor blindnesses and
errors, ended in the words, " I am the resurrection and the life."

Mr. Lorry was already out when he got back, and it was easy to
surmise where the good old man was gone. Sydney Carton drank
nothing but a little coffee, ate some bread, and, having wrashed and
changed to refresh himself, went out to the place of triaJ.

The court was all astir and a-buzz, when the black sheep — whom
many fell away from in dread — pressed him into an obscure comer
among the crowd. Mr. Lorry was there, and Doctor Manette was
there. She was there, sitting beside her father.

When her husband was brought in, she turned a look upon him, so
sustaining, so encouraging, so full of admiring love and pitying
tenderness, yet so courageous for his sake, that it called the healthy
blood into his face, brightened his glance, and animated his heart. If
there had been any eyes to notice the influence of her look, on Sydney
Carton, it would have been seen to be the same influence exactly.

Before that unjust Tribunal, there was little or no order of pro-
cedure, ensuring to any accused person any reasonable hearing.
There could have been no such Revolution, if all laws, forms, and
ceremonies, had not first been so monstrously abused, that the suicidal
vengeance of the Revolution was to scatter them all to the winds.

Every eye was turned to the jury. The same determined patriots
and good republicans as yesterday and the day before, and to-morrow
and the day after. Eager and prominent among them, one man with
a craving face, and his fingers perpetually hovering about his lips,
whose appearance gave great satisfaction to the spectators. A life-
thirsting, cannibal-looking, bloody-minded juryman, the Jacques Three
of St. Antoine. The whole jury, as a jury of dogs empannelled to try
the deer.

Every eye then turned to the five judges and the public prosecutor.
No favourable leaning in that quarter to-day. A fell, uncompromising,
murderous business-meaning there. Every eye then sought some other
eye in the crowd, and gleamed at it approvingly ; and heads nodded
at one another, before bending forward with a strained attention.

Charles Evremonde, called Darnay. Released yesterday. Re-
accused and retaken yesterday. Indictment delivered to him last
night. Suspected and Denounced enemy of the Republic, Aristocrat,
one of a family of tyrants, one of a race proscribed, for that they had

2p

5/8 A Tale of Two Cities.

used their abolished privileges to the infamous oppression of the
people. Charles Evremonde, called Daruay, in right of such pro-
scription, absolutely Dead in Law.

To this effect, in as few or fewer words, the Public Prosecutor.

The President asked, was the Accused openly denounced, or
secretly ?

" Openly, President."

" By whom ? "

" Three voices. Ernest Defarge, wine-vendor of St. Antoine."

*' Good."

" Therese Defarge, his wife."

« Good."

" Alexandre Manette, physician."

A great uproar took place in the court, arxl in the midst of it,
Doctor Manette was seen, pale and trembling, standing where he had
been seated.

*' President, I indignantly protest to you that this is a forgery and
a fraud. You know the accused to be tho husband of my daughter.
My daughter, and those dear to her, are far dearer to me than my life.
Who and where is the false conspirator who says that I denounce the
husband of my child ! "

"Citizen Manette, be tranquil. To fail in submission to the
authority of the Tribunal would bo to put yourself out of Law. As
to what is dearer to you than life, nothing can be so dear to a good
citizen as the Republic."

Loud acclamations hailed this rebuke. The President rang his
bell, and with warmth resumed.

" K the Republic should demand of you the sacrifice of your child
herself, you would have no duty but to sacrifice her. Listen to what
is to follow. In the meanwhile, be silent ! "

Frantic acclamations were again raised. Doctor Manette sat down,
with his eyes looking around, and his lips trembling ; his daughter
drew closer to him. The craving man on the jury rubbed his hands
together, and restored the usual hand to his mouth.

Defarge was produced, when the court was quiet enough to admit
of his being heard, and rapidly expounded the story of the imprison-
ment, and of his having been a mere boy in the Doctor's service, and
of the release, and of the state of the prisoner when released and
delivered to him. This short examination followed, for the court was
quick with its work.

" You did good service at the taking of the Bastille, citizen ? "

" I believe so."

Here, an excited woman screeched from the crowd : " You were
one of the best patriots there. Why not say so? You were a
cannonier that day there, and you were among the first to enter the
accursed fortress when it fell. Patriots, I speak the tnith ! "

It was The Vengeance who, amidst the warm commendations of

The Bastilie Prisoner's Manuscript 579

tLo audience, tlius assisted the proceedings. The President rang his
bell; but, The Vengeance, warming with encouragement, shrieked,
" I defy that bell ! " wherein she was likewise much commended.

" Inform the Tribunal of what you did that day within the Bastille,
citizen."

" I knew," said Defarge, looking down at his wife, who stood at the
bottom of the steps on which he was raised, looking steadily up at
him ; " I knew that this prisoner, of whom I speak, had been confined
in a cell known as One Hundred and Five, North Tower. I knew it
from himself. He knew himself by no other name than One Hundred
and Five, North Tower, when he made shoes under my care. As I
serve my gun that day, I resolve, when the place shall fall, to examine
that cell. It falls. I mount to the cell, with a fellow-citizen who
is one of the Jury, directed by a gaoler. I examine it, very closely.
In a hole in the chimney, where a stone has been worked out and
replaced, I find a written paper. This is that written paper. I have
made it my business to examine some specimens of the writing of
Dr. Manette. This is the writing of Doctor Manette. I confide this
paper, in the writing of Doctor Manette, to the hands of the President."

" Let it be read."

In a dead silence and stillness — the prisoner under trial looking
lovingly at his wife, his wife only looking from him to look with
solicitude at her father. Doctor Manette keeping his eyes fixed on the
reader, Madame Defarge never taking hers from the prisoner, Defarge
never taking his from his feasting wife, and all the other eyes there
intent upon the Doctor, who saw none of them — the paper was read,
as follows.

CHAPTER X.

THB SUBSTANCE OF THE SHADOW.

" I, Alexandbe Manette, unfortunate physician, native ol Beauvais,
and afterwards resident in Paris, write this melancholy paper in my
doleful cell in the Bastille, during the last month of the year, 1767.
I write it at stolen intervals, under every difficulty. I design to
secrete it in the wall of the chimney, where I have slowly and
laboriously made a place of concealment for it. Some pitying hand
may find it there, when I and my sorrows are dust.

"These words are formed by the rusty iron point with which I
write with difficulty in scrapings of soot and charcoal from the chimney,
mixed with blood, in the last month of the tenth year of my captivity.
Hope has quite departed from my breast. I know from terrible
warnings I have noted in myself that my reason will not long remain

580 A Tale of Two Cities.

tinimi)aired, but 1 solemnly declare that I am at this time in the
possession of my right mind — that my memory is exact and circum-
stantial— and that I write the truth as I shall answer for these my last
recorded words, whether they be ever read by men or not, at the
Eternal Judgment-seat.

"One cloudy moonlight night, in the third week of December (I
think the twenty-second of the month) in the year 1757, 1 was walking
on a retired part of the quay by the Seine for the refreshment of the
frosty air, at an hour's distance from my place of residence in the
Street of the School of Medicine, when a carriage came along behind
me, driven very fast. As I stood aside to let that carriage pass,
apprehensive that it might otherwise run me down, a head was put
out at the window, and a voice called to the driver to stop.

" The carriage stopped as soon as the driver could rein in his
horses, and the same voice called to me by my name. I answered.
The carriage was then so far in advance of me that two gentlemen
had time to open the door and alight before I came up with it. I
observed that they were both wrapped in cloaks, and appeared to conceal
themselves. As they stood side by side near the carriage door, I also
observed that they both looked of about my own age, or rather younger,
and that they were greatly alike, in stature, manner, voice, and (as far
as I could see) face too.

" ' You are Doctor Manette ? ' said one.

" ' I am.'

" ' Doctor Manette, formerly of Beauvais,' said the other ; ' the
young physician, originally an expert surgeon, who within the last
year or two has made a rising reputation in Paris ? '

" ' Gentlemen,' I returned, ' I am that Doctor Manette of whom you
speak so graciously.'

" ' We have been to your residence,' said the first, ' and not being
BO fortunate as to find you there, and being infonned that you were
probably walking in this direction, we followed, in the hope of over-
taking you. Will you please to enter the carriage ? '

" The manner of both was imperious, and they both moved, as these
words were spoken, so as to place me between themselves and the
carriage door. They were armed. I was not.

" ' Gentlemen,' said I, ' pardon me ; but I usually inquire who does
me the honour to seek my assistance, and what is the nature of the
case to which I am summoned.'

" The reply to this was made by him who had spoken second.
' Doctor, your clients are people of condition. As to the nature of the
case, our confidence in your skill assures us that you will ascertain it
for yourself better than we can describe it. Enough. Will you please
to enter the carriage ? '

" I could do nothing but comply, and I entered it in silence. They
both entered after me — the last springing in, after putting up the
steps. The carriage turned about, and drove on at its former speed.

The Fevered Patient 581

"I repeat this conversation exactly as it occurred. I have no
doubt that it is, word for word, the same. I describe everything
exactly as it took place, constraining my mind not to wander from
the task. Where I make the broken marks that follow here, I leave
off for the time, and put my paper in its hiding-place. » * « »

"The carriage left the streets behind, passed the North Barrier,
and emerged upon the country road. At two-thirds of a league from
the Barrier — I did not estimate the distance at that time, but after-
wards when I traversed it — it struck out of the main avenue, and
presently stopped at a solitary house. We all three alighted, and
walked, by a damp soft footpath in a garden where a neglected
fountain had overflowed, to the door of the house. It was not opened
immediately, in answer to the ringing of the bell, and one of my two
conductors struck the man who opened it, with his heavy riding-glove,
across the face.

" There was nothing in this action to attract my particular attention,
for I had seen common people struck more commonly than dogs.
But, the other of the two, being angry likewise, struck the man in
like manner with his arm ; the look and bearing of the brothers were
then so exactly alike, that I then first perceived them to be twin
brothers.

" From the time of our alighting at the outer gate (which we found
locked, and which one of the brothers had opened to admit us, and
had re-locked), I had heard cries proceeding from an upper chamber.
I was conducted to this chamber straight, the cries growing louder as
we ascended the stairs, and I found a patient in a high fever of the
brain, lying on a bed.

" The patient was a woman of great beauty, and young ; assuredly
not much past twenty. Her hair was torn and ragged, and her arms
were bound to her sides with sashes and handkerchiefs. I noticed
that these bonds were all portions of a gentleman's dress. On one of
them, which was a fringed scarf for a dress of ceremony, I saw the
armorial bearings of a Noble, and the letter E.

"I saw this, within the first minute of my contemplation of the
patient ; for, in her restless strivings she had turned over on her face
on the edge of the bed, had drawn the end of the scarf into her mouth,
and was in danger of suffocation. My first act was to put out my
hand to relieve her breathing ; and in moving the scarf aside, the
embroidery in the corner caught my sight.

" I turned her gently over, placed my hands upon her breast to
calm her and keep her down, and looked into her face. Her eyes
were dilated and wild, and she constantly uttered piercing shrieks,
and repeated the words, * My husband, my father, and my brother ! *
and then counted up to twelve, and said, ' Hush ! ' For an instant,
and no more, she would pause to listen, and then the piercing shrieks
would begin again, and she would repeat the cry, ' My husband, my
fotber, and lo.'^ brother J ' and would count up to twelve, and say

582 A Tale of Two Cities.

'■ Hush ! ' There was no variation in the order, or the manner. There
was no cessation, but the regular moment's pause, in the utterance of
these sounds.

" ' How long,' I asked, * has this lasted ? '

"To distinguish tho brothers, I will call them the elder and
the younger ; by the elder, I mean him who exercised tho most
authority. It was the elder who replied, ' Since about this hour last
night.'

" ' She has a husband, a father, and a brother ? '

« ' A brother.'

" ' I do not address her brother ? '

" He answered with great contempt, ' No.'

" ' She has some recent association with the number twelve ? '

" The younger brother impatiently rejoined, ' With twelve o'clock ? '

" ' See, gentlemen,' said I, still keeping my hands upon her breast,
' how useless I am, as you have brought me I If I had known what
I was coming to see, I could have come provided. As it is, time
must be lost. There are no medicines to be obtained in this lonely
place.'

"The elder brother looked to the younger, who said haughtily,
' There is a case of medicines here ; ' and brought it from a closet,
and put in on the table. * * * *

" I opened some of the bottles, smelt them, and put tho stoppers to
my lips. If I had wanted to use anything save narcotic medicines
that were poisons in themselves, I would not have administered any
of those.

" ' Do you doubt them ? ' asked the younger brother.

" ' You see, monsieur, I am going to use them,' I replied, and said
no more.

" I made the patient swallow, with great difficulty, and after many
efforts, the dose that I desired to give. As I intended to repeat it
after a while, and as it was necessary to watch its influence, I then
sat down by the side of the bed. There was a timid and suppressed
woman in attendance (wife of the man down-stairs), who had retreated
into a corner. The house was damp and decayed, indifferently
furnished — evidently, recently occupied and temporarily used. Some
thick old hangings had been nailed up before the windows, to deaden
the sound of the shrieks. They continued to be uttered in their
regular succession, with the cry, * My husband, my father, and my
brother ! ' the counting up to twelve, and ' Hush ! ' The frenzy was
so violent, that I had not unfastened the bandages restraining the
anns ; but, I had looked to them, to see that they were not painful.
The only spark of encouragement in the case, was, that my hand upon
the sufferer's breast had this much soothing influence, that for minutes
at a time it tranquillised the figure. It had no effect upon the cries ;
no pendulum could be more regular.

" For the reason that my hand had this effect (I assume), I had sat

The Dying Peasant Boy. 581

by the side of tbe bed for half an hour, with the two brothers looking
on, before the elder said :

" ' There is another patient.'

" I was startled, and asked, * Is it a pressing case ? '

" ' You had better see,* he carelessly answered ; and took up a
light. ♦ * * ♦

" The other patient lay in a back room across a second staircase,
which was a species of loft over a stable. There was a low plastered
ceiling to a part of it ; the rest was open, to the ridge of the tiled
roof, and there were beams across. Hay and straw were stored in
that portion of the place, fagots for firing, and a heap of apples in
sand. I had to pass through that part, to get at the other. My
memory is circumstantial and unshaken. I try it with these details,
and I see them all, in this my cell in the Bastille, near the close of
the tenth year of my captivity, as I saw them all that night.

" On some hay on the giound, with a cushion thrown under his
• head, lay a handsome peasant boy — a boy of not more than seventeen
at the most. He lay on his back, with his teeth set, his right hand
clenched on his breast, and his glaring eyes looking straight upward.
I could not see where his wound was, as I kneeled on one knee over
him ; but, I could see that he was dying of a wound from a sharp
point.

" * I am a doctor, my poor fellow,' said I. * Let me examine it.'

" ' I do not want it examined,' he answered ; ' let it be.'

" It was under his hand, and I soothed him to let me move his
hand away. The wound was a sword-thrust, received from twenty to
twenty-four hours before, but no skill could have saved him if it had
been looked to without delay. He was then dying fast. As I turned
my eyes to the elder brother, I saw him looking down at this hand-
some boy whose life was ebbing out, as if he were a wounded bird, or
hare, or rabbit ; not at all as if he were a fellow-creature.

" ' How has this been done, monsieur ? ' said I.

" ' A crazed young common dog ! A serf ! Forced my brother to
draw upon him, and has fallen by my brother's sword — like a gentle-
man.'

" There was no touch of pity, sorrow, or kindred humanity, in this
answer. The speaker seemed to acknowledge that it was inconvenient
to have that different order of creature dying there, and that it would
have been better if he had died in the usual obscure routine of his
vermin kind. He was quite incapable of any compassionate feeling
about the boy, or about his fate.

" The boy's eyes bad slowly moved to him as he had spoken, and
they now slowly moved to me.

" * Doctor, they are very proud, these Nobles ; but we common dogs
are proud too, sometimes. They plunder us, outrage us, beat us, lull

us; but we have a little pride left, sometimes. Sbe have you

seen her, Doctor ? '

584 A Tale of Ttvo Cities.

" The shrieks and the cries were audible there, though subdued by
the distance. He referred to them, as if she were lying in our presence.

" I said, ' I have seen her.'

" ' She is my sister, Doctor. They have had their shameful rights,
these Nobles, in the modesty and virtue of our sisters, many years,
but v,e have had good girls among us. I know it, and have heard
my father say so. She was a good girl. She was betrothed to a good
young man, too : a tenant of his. Wo were all tenants of his — that
man's who stands there. The other is his brother, the worst of a bad
race.'

" It was with the greatest difficulty that the boy gathered bodily
force to speak ; but, his spirit spoke with a dreadful emphasis.

"'We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as all we
common dogs are by those superior Beings — taxed by him without
mercy, obliged to work for him without pay, obliged to grind our
corn at his mill, obliged to feed scores of his tame birds on our
wretched crops, and forbidden for our lives to keep a single tame bird
of our own, pillaged and plundered to that degree that when we
chanced to have a bit of meat, we ate it in fear, with the door barred
and the shutters closed, that his people should not see it and take it
from us — I say, we were so robbed, and hunted, and were made so
poor, that our father told us it was a dreadful thing to bring a child
into tlie world, and that what we should most pray for, was, that our
women might be barren and our miserable race die out ! '

" I had never before seen the sense of being oppressed, bursting
forth like a fire. I had supposed that it must be latent in the people
somewhere ; but, I had never seen it break out, until I saw it in the
dying boy.

" ' Nevertheless, Doctor, my sister married. He was ailing at that
time, poor fellow, and she married her lover, that she might tend and
comfort him in our cottage — our dog-hut, as that man would call it.
She had not been married many weeks, when that man's brother saw
her and admired her, and asked that man to lend her to him — for
what are husbands among us ! He was willing enough, but my sister
was good and virtuous, and hated his brother with a hatred as strong
as mine. What did the two then, to persuade her husband to use his
influence ^dth her, to make her willing ? '

" The boy's eyes, which had been fixed on mine, slowly turned to
the looker-on, and I saw in the two faces that all he said was true.
The two opposing kinds of pride confronting one another, I can see,
even in this Bastille ; the gentleman's, all negligent indifi"erence ; the
peasant's, all trodden-down sentiment, and passionate revenge.

" ' You know. Doctor, that it is among the Eights of these Nobles
to harness us common dogs to carts, and drive us. They so harnessed
him and drove him. You know that it is among their Eights to keep
us in their grounds all night, quieting the frogs, in order that their
noble sleep may not be disturbed. They kept him out in the un-

The Cross of Blood. 585

wholesome mists at night, and ordered him back into his liarncss in
the day. But he was not persuaded. No! Taken out of harness
one day at noon, to feed — if he could find food — he sobbed twelve
times, once for every stroke of the bell, and died on her bosom.'

" Nothing human could have held life in the boy but his determina-
tion to tell all his wrong. He forced back the gathering shadows of
death, as he forced his clenched right hand to remain clenched, and
to cover his wound.

" ' Then, with that man's permission and even with his aid, his
brother took her away ; in spite of what I know she must have told
his brother — and what that is, will not be long unknown to you,
Doctor, if it is now — his brother took her away — for his pleasure and
divereion, for a little while. I saw her pass me on the road. When
I took the tidings home, our father's heart burst ; he never spoke one
of the words that filled it. I took my young sister (for I have another)
to a place beyond the reach of this man, and where, at least, she will
never be Ma vassal. Then, I tracked the brother here, and last night
climbed in — a common dog, but sword in hand. — Where is the loft
window ? It was somewhere here ? *

" The room was darkening to his sight ; the world was narrowing
around him. I glanced about me, and saw that the hay and straw
were trampled over the floor, as if there had been a struggle.

" ' She heard me, and ran in. I told her not to come near us till
he was dead. He came in and first tossed me some pieces of money ;
then struck at me with a whip. But I, though a common dog, so
struck at him as to make him draw. Let him break into as many
pieces as he will, the sword that he stained with my common blood ;
he drew to defend himself — thrust at me with all his skill for his life.'

" My glance had fallen, but a few moments before, on the fragments
of a broken sword, lying among the hay. That weapon was a gentle-
man's. In another place, lay an old sword that seemed to have been
a soldier's.

" * Now, lift me up. Doctor ; lift me up. Where is he ? *

" ' He is not here,' I said, supporting the boy, and thinking that he
referred to the brother.

" ' He ! Proud as these Nobles are, he is afraid to see me. Where
is the man who was here ? Turn my face to him.'

" I did so, raising the boy's head against my knee. But, invested
for the moment with extraordinary power, he raised himself com-
pletely : obliging me to rise too, or 1 could not have still supported
him.

" ' Marquis,' said the boy, turned to him with his eyes opened wide,
and his right hand raised, ' in the days when all these things are to
be answered for, I summon you and yours, to the last of your bad
race, to answer for them. I mark this cross of blood upon you, as a
sign that I do it. In the days when all these things are to bo
answered for, I summon your brother, the worst of the bad race, to

585 A Tale of Two Cities,

answer for them separately. I mark this cross of blood upon him,, as
a sign that I do it.'

" Twice, he put his hand to the wound in his breast, and with his
forefinger drew a cross in the air. He stood for an instant with the
finger yet raised, and, as it dropped, ho dropped with it, and I laid
him down dead. * * * *

" When I returned to the bedside of the young woman, I found her
raving in precisely the same order and continuity. I knew that this
might last for many hours, and that it would probably end in the
sUence of the grave.

" I repeated the medicines I had given her, and I sat at the side of
the bed until the night was far advanced. She never abated tho
piercing quality of her shrieks, never stumbled in the distinctness or
the order of her words. They were always ' My husband, my father,
and my brother ! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,
ten, eleven, twelve. Hush ! '

" This lasted twenty-six hours from the time when I first saw her.
I had come and gone twice, and was again sitting by her, when she
began to falter. I did what little could be done to assist that oppor-
tunity, and by-and-by she sank into a lethargy, and lay like the dead.

" It was as if the wind and rain had lulled at last, after a long and
fearful storm. I released her arms, and called the woman to assist me
to compose her figure and the dress she had torn. It was then that
I knew her condition to be that of one in whom the first expectations
of being a mother have arisen ; and it was then that I lost the little
hope I had had of her.

" ' Is she dead ? ' asked the Marquis, whom I will still describe as
the elder brother, coming booted into the room from his horse.

« ' Not dead,' said I ; 'but like to die.'

" ' What strength there is in these common bodies ! ' he said, looking
down at her with some curiosity.

" ' There is prodigious strength,' I answered him, ' in sorrow and
despair.'

" He first laughed at my words, and then frowned at them. He
moved a chair with his foot near to mine, ordered the woman away,
and said in a subdued voice,

" ' Doctor, finding my brother in this difficulty with these hinds, I
recommended that your aid should be invited. Your reputation is
high, and, as a young man with your fortune to make, you are probably
mindful of your interest. The things that you see here, are things to
be seen, and not spoken of."

*' I listened to the patient's breathing, and avoided answering.

" ' Do you honour me with your attention. Doctor ? '

"'Monsieur,' said I, 'in my profession, the communications of
patients are always received in confidence.' I was guarded in my
answer, for I was troubled in my mind with what I had heard and
seen.

Death of the Peasant Girl. 587

" Her breathing was so difficult to trace, that I carefully tried the
pulse and the heart. There was life, and no more. Looking round as
I resumed my seat, I found both the brothers intent upon me. * * *

" I write with so much difficulty, the cold is so severe, I am so
fearful of being detected and consigned to an underground cell and
total darkness, that I must abridge this narrative. There is no con-
fusion or failure in my memory ; it can recall, and could detail, every
word that was ever spoken between me and those brothers.

" She lingered for a week. Towards the last, I could imderstand
some few syllables that she said to me, by placing my ear close to her
lips. She asked me where she was, and I told her ; who I was, and
I told her. It was in vain that I asked her for her family name. She
faintly shook her head upon the pillow, and kept her secret, as the
boy had done.

" I had no opportunity of asking her any question, until I had told
the brothers she was sinking fast, and could not live another day.
Until then, though no one was ever presented to her consciousness
save the woman and myself, one or other of them had always jealously
sat behind the curtain at the head of the bed when I was there. But
when it came to that, they seemed careless what communication I
might hold with her ; as if — the thought passed through my mind — I
were dying too.

" I always observed that their pride bitterly resented the younger
brother's (as I call him) having crossed swords with a peasant, and
that peasant a boy. The only consideration that appeared to affect
the mind of either of them was the consideration that this was highly
degrading to tho family, and was ridiculous. As often as I caught
the younger brother's eyes, their expression reminded me that he
disliked me deeply, for knowing what I knew from the boy. He
"was smoother and more polite to me than the elder ; but I saw
this. I also saw that I was an incumbrance in the mind of the elder,
too.

" My patient died, two hours before midnight — at a time, by my
watch, answering almost to the minute when I had first seen her. I
was alone \vith her, when her forlorn young head drooped gently on
one side, and all her earthly wrongs and sorrows ended.

" The brothers were waiting in a room down-stairs, impatient to ride
away. I had heard them, alone at the bedside, striking their boots
with their riding-whips, and loitering up and down.

" ' At last she is dead ? ' said the elder, when I went in.

" ' She is dead,' said I.

" ' I congratulate you, my brother,' were his words as he turned
round.

" He had before offered me money, which I had postponed taking.
He now gave me a rouleau of gold. I took it from his hand, but laid
it on the table. I had considered the question, and had resolved to
accept nothing.

588 A Tale of Two Cities.

" ' Pray excuse me,' said I. * Under the circumstances, no.'

" They exchanged looks, but bent their heads to me as I bent mine
to them, and we parted without another word on either side. * * *

" I am weary, weary, weary — worn down by misery. I cannot read
what I have written with this gaunt hand.

" Early in the morning, the rouleau of gold was left at my door in
a little box, with my name on the outside. From the first, I had
anxiously considered what I ought to do. I decided, that day, to write
privately to the Minister, stating the nature of the two cases to which
I had been summoned, and the place to which I had gone : in eflfect,
stating all the circumstances. I knew what Court influence was, and
what the immunities of the Nobles were, and I expected that the
matter would never be heard of; but, I wished to relieve my own
mind. I had kept the matter a profound secret, even from my wife ;
and this, too, I resolved to state in my letter. I had no apprehension
whatever of my real danger ; but I was conscious that there might
be danger for others, if others were compromised by possessing the
knowledge that I possessed.

" I was much engaged that day, and could not complete my letter
that night. I rose long before my usual time next morning to finish
it. It was the last day of the year. The letter was lying before mo
just completed, when I was told that a lady waited, who wished to see
me. * * * *

"I am growing more and more une(j[ual to the task I have set
myself. It is so cold, so dark, my senses are so benumbed, and the
gloom upon me is so dreadful.

" The lady was young, engaging, and handsome, but not marked for
long life. She was in great agitation. She presented herself to me
as the wife of the Marquis St. Evremonde. I connected the title by
which the boy had addressed the elder brother, with the initial letter
embroidered on the scarf, and had no difficulty in arriving at the
conclusion that I had seen that nobleman very lately.

" My memory is still accurate, but I cannot write the words of our
conversation. I suspect that I am watched more closely than I was,
and I know not at what times I may be watched. She had in part
suspected, and in part discovered, the main facts of the cruel story, of
her husband's share in it, and my being resorted to. She did not
know that the girl was dead. Her hope had been, she said in great
distress, to show her, in secret, a woman's sympathy. Her hope had
been to avert the wrath of Heaven from a House that had long been
hateful to the suflfering many.

" She had reasons for believing that there was a young sister living,
and her greatest desire was, to help that sister. I could tell her
nothing but that there was such a sister ; beyond that, I knew nothing.
Her inducement to come to me, relying on my confidence, had been
the hope that I could tell her the name and place of abode. Whereas,
to this wretched hour I am ignorant of both. « » * ♦

Nobility of the Noble Brother. 589

*' These scraps of paper fail me. One was taken from me, with a
' warring, yesterday. I must finish my record to-day.

" She was a good, compassionate lady, and not happy in her marriage.
How could she be ! The brother distrusted and disliked her, and his
influence was all opposed to her ; she stood in dread of him, and in
dread of her husband too. "When I handed her down to the door,
. there was a child, a pretty boy from two to three years old, in her
carriage.

" * For his sake, Doctor,' she said, pointing to him in tears, ' I would
do all I can to make what poor amends I can. He will never prosper
in his inheritance otherwise. I have a presentiment that if no other
innocent atonement is made for this, it will one day be required of
him, "What I have left to call my own — it is little beyond the worth
of a few jewels — I will make it the first charge of his life to bestow,
with the compassion and lamenting of his dead mother, on this injured
family, if the sister can be discovered.'

" She kissed the boy, and said, caressing him, ' It is for thine own
dear sake. Thou wilt be faithful, little Charles?' The child
answered her bravely, ' Yes ! ' I kissed her hand, and she took him
in her arms, and went away caressing him. I never saw her more.

" As she had mentioned her husband's name in the faith that I knew
it, I added no mention of it to my letter. I sealed my letter, and, not
trusting it out of my own hands, delivered it myself that day.

" That night, the last night of the year, towards nine o'clock, a man
in a black dress rang at my gate, demanded to see me, and softly
followed my servant, Ernest Defarge, a youth, up-stairs. When my
servant came into the room where I sat with my wife — 0 my wife,
beloved of my heart! My fair young English wife! — we saw the
man, who was supposed to be at the gate, standing silent behind him.

"An urgent case in the Eue St. Honore, he said. It would not
detain me, he had a coach in waiting.

" It brought me here, it brought mo to my grave. When I was
clear of the house, a black muffler was drawn tightly over my mouth
from behind, and my arms were pinioned. The two brothers crossed
the road from a dark comer, and identified me with a single gesture.
The Marquis took from his pocket the letter I had written, showed it
me, burnt it in the light of a lantern that was held, and extinguished
the ashes with his foot. Not a word was spoken. I was brought here,
I was brought to my living grave.

" If it had pleased God to put it in the hard heart of either of the
brothers, in all these frightful years, to grant me any tidings of my
dearest wife — so much as to let me know by a word whether alive or
dead — I might have thought that He had not quite abandoned them.
But, now I believe that the mark of the red cross is fatal to them, and
that they have no part in His mercies. And them and their descen-
dants, to the last of their race, I, Alexandre Manette, unhappy prisoner,
do this last night of the year 1767, in my unbearable agony, denounce

590 A Tale of Two Cities.

to the times when all those things shall be answered for. I denounce
them to Heaven and to earth."

A terrible sound arose when the reading of this document was done.
A sound of craving and eagerness that had nothing articulate in it
but blood. The narrative called up the most revengeful passions of
the time, and there was not a head in the nation but must have dropped
before it.

Little need, in presence of that tribunal and that auditory, to show
how the Defarges had not made the paper public, with the other
captured Bastille memorials borne in procession, and had kept it,
biding their time. Little need to show that this detested family name
had long been anathematised by Saint Antoine, and was wrought into
the fatal register. The man never trod ground whose virtues and
services would have sustained him in that place that day, against such
denunciation.

And all the worse for the doomed man, that the denouncer was a
well-known citizen, his own attached friend, the father of his wife.
One of the fi-enzied aspirations of the populace was, for imitations of
the questionable public virtues of antiquity, and for sacrifices and
self-immolations on the people's altar. Therefore when the President
said (else had his own head quivered on his shoulders), that the good
physician of the Republic would deserve better still of the Republic
by rooting out an obnoxious family of Aristocrats, and would doubtless
feel a sacred glow and joy in making his daughter a widow and her
child an orphan, there was wild excitement, patriotic fervour, not a
touch of human sympathy.

" Much influence around him, has that Doctor ? " murmured Madame
Defarge, smiling to The Vengeance, "Save him now, my Doctor,
save him ! "

At every juryman's vote, there was a roar. Another and another.
Roar and roar.

Unanimously voted. At heart and by descent an Aristocrat, an
enemy of the Republic, a notorious oppressor of the People. Back to
the Conciergerie, and Death within four-and-twenty houi's !

CHAPTER XI.

DUSK.

The wretched wife of the innocent man thus doomed to die, feli under
the sentence, as if she had been mortally stricken. But, she uttered
no sound ; and so strong was the voice witliin her, representing that
it was she of all the world who must uphold him in his misery

A Parting Blessing. 59I

And not fiugment it, that it quickly raised hor, even from that
ehock.

The judges having to tako part in a public demonstration out of
doors, the tribunal adjourned. The quick noise and movement of the
court's emptying itself by many passages had not ceased, when Lucie
stood stretching oiit her arms towards her husband, with nothing in
her face but love and consolation.

" K I might touch him ! If I might embrace him once ! 0, good
citizens, if you would have so much compassion for us ! "

There was but a gaoler left, along with two of the foiu* men who
had taken him last night, and Barsad. The people had all poured
out to the show in the streets. Barsad proposed to the rest, " Let
her embrace him then ; it is but a moment." It was silently acquiesced
in, and they passed her over the seats in the hall to a raised place,
where he, by leaning over the dock, could fold her in his arms.

" Farewell, dear darling of my soul. My parting blessing on my
love. We shall meet again, where the weary are at rest ! "

They were her husband's words, as he held her to his bosom.

" I can bear it, dear Charles. I am supported from above : don't
Bufifer for me. A parting blessing for our child."

" I send it to her by you. I kiss her by you. I say farewell to her
by you."

" My husband. No ! A moment ! " Ho was tearing himself apart
from her. " Wo shall not be separated long. I feel that this will
break my heart by-and-by ; but I will do my duty while I can, and
when I leave her, God will raise up friends for her, as Ho did
for me."

Her father had followed her, and would have fallen on his knees to
both of them, but that Darnay put out a hand and seized him, crying :

" No, no ! What have you done, what have you done, that you
should kneel to us ! We know now, what a struggle yon made of old.
We know now, what you underwent when you suspected my descent,
and when you knew it. We know now, the natural antipathy you
strove against, and conquered, for her dear sake. We thank you with
all our hearts, and all our love and duty. Heaven be with you ! "

Her father's only answer was to draw his hands through his white
hail", and wring them with a shriek of anguish.

" It could not be otherwise," said the prisoner. " All things have
worked together as they have fallen out. It was the always-vain
endeavour to discharge my poor mother's trust that first brought my
fatal presence near you. Good could never come of such evil, a
happier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning. Be com-
forted, and forgive me. Heaven bless you ! "

As he was drawn away, his wife released him, and stood looking
after him with her hands touching one another in the attitude of
prayer, and with a radiant look upon her face, in which there was
«yeu a comforting smile. As he went out at the prisoners' door, she

59^ A Tale of Two Cities.

turned, laid lier head lovingly on her father's breast, tried to speak to
him, and fell at his feet.

Then, issuing from the obscure corner from which ho had never
moved, Sydney Carton came and took her up. Only her father and
Mr. Lorry were with her. His arm trembled as it raised her, and
supported her head. Yet, there was an air about him that was not all
of pity — that had a flush of pride in it.

" Shall I take her to a coach ? I shall never feel her weight."

He carried her lightly to the door, and laid her tenderly down in a
coach. Her father and their old friend got into it, and he took his
Beat beside the driver.

When they arrived at the gateway where he had paused in the dark
not many hours before, to picture to himself on which of the rough
stones of the street her feet had trodden, he lifted her again, and
carried her up the staircase to their rooms. There, he laid her down
on a couch, where her child and Miss Press wept over her.

" Don't recall her to herself," he said, softly, to the latter, " she is
better so. Don't revive her to consciousness, while she only faints."

" Oh, Carton, Carton, dear Carton ! " cried little Lucie, springing
up and throwing her arms passionately round him, in a burst of grief
" Now that you have come, I think you will do something to help
mamma, something to save papa I 0, look at her, dear Carton ! Can
you, of all the people who love her, bear to see her so ? "

He bent over the child, and laid her blooming cheek against his
face. He put her gently from him, and looked at her unconscious
mother.

" Before I go," he said, and paused — '" I may kiss her ? "

It was remembered afterwards that when he bent down and touched
her face with his lips, he murmured some words. The child, who
was nearest to him, told them afterwards, and told her grandchildren
when she was a handsome old lady, that she heard him say, " A life
you love."

When he had gone out into the next room, he turned suddenly on
Mr. Lorry and her father, who were following, and said to the latter :

" You had great influence but yesterday. Doctor Manette ; let it at
least be tried. These judges, and all the men in power, are very
friendly to you, and very recognisant of your services ; axe they
not?"

" Nothing connected with Charles was concealed from me. I had
the strongest assurances that I should save him; and I did." He
returned the answer in great trouble, and very slowly.

" Try them again. The hours between this and to-morrow after-
noon are few and short, but try."

" I intend to try. I will not rest a moment."

" That's well. I have known such energy as yours do great things
before now — though never," he added, with a smile and a sigh together,
*• Buch great things as this. But try ! Of little worth as life is when

-J^

JT"

■

• —

No Real Hope. 593

we misuse it, it is worth that effort. It would cost nothing to lay
down if it were not."

"I will go," said Doctor Manette, "to the Prosecutor and the
President straight, and I will go to others whom it is better not to

name. I will write, too, and But stay ! There is a celebration

in the streets, and no one will be accessible until dark."

" That's true. Well ! It is a forlorn hope at the best, and not
much the forlorner for being delayed till dark. I should like to know
how you speed ; though, mind ! I expect nothing I When are you
likely to have seen these dread powers. Doctor Manette ? "

" Immediately after dark, I should hope. Within an hour or two
from this."

" It will be dark soon after four. Let us stretch the hour or two.
If I go to Mr. Lorry's at nine, shall I hear what you have done, either
from our friend or from yourself? "

«' Yes."

" May you prosper ! "

Mr. Lorry followed Sydney to the outer door, and, touching him on
the shoulder as he was going away, caused him to turn.

" I have no hope," said Mr. Lorry, in a low and sorrowful whisper.

" Nor have I."

" If any one of these men, or all of these men, were disposed to
spare him — which is a large supposition ; for what is his life, or any
man's to them! — I doubt if they durst spare him after the demonstra-
tion in the court."

" And so do I. I heard the fall of the axe in that sound."

Mr. Lorry leaned his arm upon the door-post, and bowed his face
upon it.

" Don't despond," said Carton, very gently ; " don't grieve. 1
encom-aged Doctor Manette in this idea, because I felt that it might
one day be consolatory to her. Otherwise, she might think ' his life
was wantonly thrown away or wasted,' and that might trouble her."

" Yes, yes, yes," returned Mr. Lorry, drying his eyes, " you are
right. But he will perish ; there is no real hope."

" Yes. He will perish : there is no real hope," echoed Carton.
And walked with a settled step, down-stairs.

2q

CHAPTER Xn.

DARKNESS.

Sydney Carton paused in the street, not quite decided where to go.
"At Tellson's banking-house at nine," he said, with a musing face.
" Shall I do well, in the mean time, to show myself? I think so. It
is best that these people should know there is such a man as I here ;
it is a sound precaution, and may be a necessary preparation. But
care, care, care ! Let me think it out ! "

Chocking his steps which had begun to tend towards an object, he
took a turn or two in the already darkening street, and traced tho
thought in his mind to its possible consequences. His first impression
was confirmed. " It is best," he said, finally resolved, " that these
people should know there is such a man as I here." And he turned
his face towards Saint Antoine.

Defarge had described himself, that day, as the keeper of a wine-
shop in the Saint Antoine suburb. It was not difficult for one who
knew the city well, to find his house without asking any question.
Having ascertained its situation. Carton came out of those closer
streets again, and dined at a place of refreshment and fell sound
asleep after dinner. For the first time in many years, he had no
strong drink. Since last night he had taken nothing but a little
light thin \vine, and last night he had dropped the brandy slowly
down on Mr, Lorry's hearth like a man who had done with it.

It was as late as seven o'clock when he awoke refreshed, and went
out into the streets again. As he passed along towards Saint
Antoine, he stopped at a shop-window where there was a mirror, and
slightly altered the disordered arrangement of his loose cravat, and
his coat-collar, and his wild hair. This done, he went on direct to
Defarge's, and went in.

There happened to be no customer in the shop but Jacques Three,
of the restless fingers and the croaking voice. This man, whom he
had seen upon the Jury, stood drinking at the little counter, in con-
versation with the Defarges, man and wife. The Vengeance assisted
in the conversation, like a regular member of the establishment.

As Carton walked in, took his seat and asked (in very indifferent
French) for a small measure of wine, Madame Defarge cast a careless
glance at him, and then a keener, and then a keener, and then
advanced to him herself, and asked him what it was he had ordered.

He repeated what he had already said.

" English ? " asked Madame Defarge, inquisitively raising her dark
eyebrows.

After looking at her, as if the sound of even a single French word

The Conversation at the Wine-shop, 595

were slow to cxpresB itself to him, lio answered, in his former strong
foreigu accent, " Yes, madame, yes. I am English ! "

Madame Defarge returned to her counter to get the wine, and, as
he took up a Jacobin journal and feigned to pore over it puzzling
out its meaning, he heard her say, " I swear to you, like Evremonde ! "

Defarge brought him the wine, and gave him Good-evening.

"How?"

" Good-evening."

" Oh ! Gccd-evening, citizen," filling his glass. " Ah ! and good
wine. I drink to the Republic."

Defarge went back to the counter, and said, "Certainly, a little
like." Madame sternly retorted, "I tell you a good deal like."
Jacques Three pacifically remarked, " He is so much in your mind,
see you, madame." The amiable Vengeance added, with a laugh,
" Yes, my faith 1 And you are looking forward with so much pleasure
to seeing him once more to-morrow I "

Carton followed the lines and words of his paper, with a slow fore-
finger, and with a studious and absorbed face. They were all leaning
their arms on the counter close together, speaking low. After a
silence of a few moments, during which they all looked towards him
without disturbing his outward attention from the Jacobin editor,
they resumed their conversation.

" It is true what madame says," observed Jacques Three. " Why
stop ? There is great force in that. "Why stop ? "

" Well, well," reasoned Defarge, " but one must stop somewhere.
After all, the question is still Avhere ? "

" At extermination," said madame.

"Magnificent!" croaked Jacques Three. The Vengeance, also,
highly approved.

"Extermination is good doctrine, my wife," said Defarge, rather
troubled ; " in general, I say nothing against it. But this Doctor
has suffered much ; you have seen him to-day ; you have observed
his face when the paper was read."

"I have observed his face!" repeated madame, contemptuously
and angrily. " Yes. I have observed his face. I have observed his
face to be not the face of a true friend of the Republic. Let him
take care of his face ! "

" And you have observed, my wife," said Defarge, in a deprecatory
manner, "the anguish of his daughter, which must be a dreadful
anguish to him ! "

" I have observed liis daughter," repeated madame ; " yes, I have
observed his daughter, more times than one. I have observed her
to-day, and I have observed her other days. I have observed her in
the court, and I have observed her in the street by the prison. Let

me but lift my finger 1 " She seemed to raise it (the listener's

eyes were always on his paperV and to let it fall with 9 rattle on the
ledge before her, as if the axe nad dropped.

596 A Tale of Two Cities.

" The citizeness is superb ! " croaked the Juryman.

" She is an Angel ! " said The Vengeance, and embraced her.

"As to thee," pursued madame, implacably, addressing her
husband, " if it depended on thee — which, happily, it does not — thou
wouldst rescue this man even now."

•' No ! " protested Defarge. " Not if to lift this glass would do it !
But I would leave the matter there. 1 say, stop there."

*' See you then, Jacques," said Madame Defarge, wrathfully ; " and
see you, too, my little Vengeance ; see you both ! Listen ! For
other crimes as tyrants and oppressors, I have this race a long time
on my register, doomed to destruction and extermination. Ask my
husband, is that so."

" It is so," assented Defarge, without being asked.

" In the beginning of the great days, when the Bastille falls, ho
finds this paper of to-day, and he brings it home, and in the middle
of the night when this place is clear and shut, we read it, here on this
spot, by the light of this lamp. Ask him, is that so."

" It is so," assented Defarge.

•' That night, I tell him, when the paper is read through, and the
lamp is burnt out, and the day is gleaming in above those shutters
and between those iron bars, that I have now a secret to communicate.
Ask him, is that so."

"It is so," assented Defarge again.

" I communicate to him that secret. I smite his bosom with these
two hands as I smite it now, and I tell him, ' Defarge, I was brought
up among the fishermen of the sea-shore, and that peasant family so
injured by the two Evremonde brothers, as that BastUle paper
describes, is my family. Defarge, that sister of the mortally wounded
boy upon the ground was my sister, that husband was my sister's
husband, that unborn child was their child, that brother was my
brother, that father was my father, those dead are my dead, and that
summons to answer for those things descends to me ! ' Ask him, is
that so."

" It is so," assented Defarge once more.

" Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop," returned madame ; " but
don't tell me."

Both her hearers derived a horrible enjoyment from the deadly
nature of her wrath — the listener could feel how white she was, with-
out seeing her — and both highly commended it. Defarge, a weak
minority, interposed a few words for the memory of the compassionate
wife of the Marquis ; but only elicited from his own wife a repetition
of her last reply. "Tell the Wind and the Fire where to stop;
not me ! "

Customers entered, and the group was broken up. The English
customer paid for what he had had, perplexedly counted his change,
and asked, as a stranger, to be directed towards the National Palace.
Madame Defarge took him to the door, and put her arm on his, in

Again, the Shoemaker. 597

pointing out the road. The English customer was not without his
reflections then, that it might be a good deed to seize that arm, lift it,
and strike under it sharp and deep.

But, he went his way, and was soon swallowed up in the shadow of
the prison-wall. At the appointed hour, he emerged from it to present
himself in Mr. Lorry's room again, where he found the old gentleman
walking to and fro in restless anxiety. Ho said ho had been with
Lucie until just now, and had only left her for a few minutes, to come
and keep his appointment. Her father had not been seen, since he
quitted the banking-house towards four o'clock. She had some faint
hopes that his mediation might save Charles, but they were very
slight. He had been more than five hours gone : where could he be ?

Mr. Lorry waited until ten; but, Doctor Manotte not returning,
and he being unwilling to leave Lucie any longer, it was arranged
that he should go back to her, and come to the banking-house again
at midnight. In the meanwhile. Carton would wait alone by the fire
for the Doctor.

He waited and waited, and the clock struck twelve; but Doctor
Manette did not come back. Mr. Lorry returned, and found no
tidings of him, and brought none. Where could he be ?

They were discussing this question, and were almost building up
some weak structure of hope on his prolonged absence, when they
heard him on the stairs. The instant he entered the room, it was
plain that all was lost.

Whether he had really been to any one, or whether he had been all
that time traversing the streets, was never known. As he stood
staring at them, they asked him no question, for his face told them
everything.

" I cannot find it," said he, " and I must have it. Where is it ? "

His head and throat were bare, and, as he spoke with a helpless
look straying all around, he took his coat oflf, and let it drop on the
floor.

" Where is my bench ? I have been looking everywhere for my
bench, and I can't find it. What have they done with my work?
Time presses ; I must finish those shoes."

They looked at one another, and their hearts died within them.

" Come, come ! " said he, in a whimpering miserable way ; " let me
get to work. Give me my work."

Eeceiving no answer, he tore his hair, and beat his feet upon the
ground, like a distracted child.

" Don't torture a poor forlorn wretch," he implored them, with a
dreadful cry ; " but give mo my work 1 What is to become of us, if
those shoes are not done to-night ? "

Lost, utterly lost 1

It was so clearly beyond hope to reason with him, or try to restore
him, — that — as if by agreement— they each put a hand upon his
shoulder, and soothed him to sit down before the fire, with a promise

598 A Tale of Two Cities.

tlxat he should have his work presently. He sank into the chair, and
brooded over the embers, and shed tears. As if all that had happened
since the garret time were a momentary fancy, or a dream, Mr. Lorry
saw him shrink into the exact figiire that Defarge had had in keeping.

Affected, and impressed with terror as they both were, by this
spectacle of ruin, it was not a time to yield to such emotions. His
lonely daughter, bereft of her final hope and reliance, appealed to them
both too strongly. Again, as if by agreement, they looked at one
another with one meaning in their faces. Carton was the first to speak :

" The last chance is gone : it was not much. Yes ; he had better
be taken to her. But, before you go, will you, for a moment, steadily
attend to me ? Don't ask me why I make the stipulations I am going
to make, and exact the promise I am going to exact ; I have a reason
— a good one."
- " 1 do not doubt it," answered Mi-. Lorry. " Say on."

The figure in the chair between them, was all the time monotonously
rocking itself to and fro, and moaning. They spoke in such a tone as
they would have used if they had been watching by a sick-bed in the
night.

Carton stooped to pick up the coat, which lay almost entangling his
feet. As he did so, a small case in which the Doctor was accustomed
to carry the list of his day's duties, fell lightly on the floor. Carton
took it up, and there was a folded paper in it. " We should look at
this ! " he said. Mr. Lorry nodded his consent. He opened it, and
exclaimed, " Thank God ! "

" What is it ? " asked Mr. Lorry, eagerly.

" A moment ! Let me speak of it in its place. First," he put his
hand in his coat, and took another paper from it, "that is the
certificate which enables me to pass out of this city. Look at it.
You see — Sydney Carton, an Englishman ? "

Mr. Lorry held it open in his hand, gazing in his earnest face.

" Keep it for me until to-morrow. I shall see him to-morrow, you
remember, and I had better not take it into the prison."

" Why not ? "

" I don't know ; I prefer not to do so. Now, take this paper that
Doctor Manette has carried about him. It is a similar certificate,
enabling him and his daughter and her child, at any time, to pass the
barrier and the frontier ? You see ? "

« Yes ! "

*' Perhaps he obtained it as his last and utmost precaution against
evil, yesterday. When is it dated ? But no matter ; don't stay to
look ; put it up carefully with mine and your own. Now, observe !
I never doubted until within this hour or two, that he had, or could
have such a paper. It is good, until recalled. But it may be soon
recalled, and, I have reason to think, will be."

" They are not in danger ? "

" They are in great danger. They are in danger of denunciation

Sydney Carton's Last Instructions. 599

by Madame Defiai'ge. I know it from her own lips. I have overheard
words of that woman's, to-night, which have presented their danger to
me in strong colours. I have lost no time, and since then, I have seen
the spy. He confirms me. Ho knows that a wood-sawyer, living by
the prison-wall, is under the control of the Defarges, and has been
rehearsed by Madame Defarge as to his having seen Her " — he never
mentioned Lucie's name — " making signs and signals to prisoners. It
is easy to foresee that the pretence will be the common one, a prison
plot, and that it will involve her life — and perhaps her child's— and
perhaps her father's — for both have been seen with her at that place.
Don't look so horrified. You will save them all."

" Heaven grant I may, Carton ! But how ? "

" I am going to tell you how. It will depend on you, and it could
depend on no better man. This new denunciation will certainly not
take place until after to-morrow, probably not untU two or three
days afterwards ; more probably a week afterwards. You know it is
a capital crime, to mourn for, or sympathise with, a victim of the
Guillotine. She and her father would unquestionably be guilty of
this crime, and this woman (the inveteracy of whose pursuit cannot be
described) would wait to add that strength to her case, and make her-
self doubly sure. You follow me ? "

" So attentively, and with so much confidence in what you say, that
for the moment I lose sight," touching the back of the Doctor's chair,
" even of this distress."

" You have money, and can buy the means of travelling to the sea-
coast as quickly as the journey can be made. Your preparations have
been completed for some days, to return to England. Early to-morrow
have your horses ready, so that they may be in starting trim at two
o'clock in the afternoon."

" It shall be done ! "

His manner was so fervent and inspiring, that Mr. Lorry caught
the flame, and was as quick as youth.

"You are a noble heart. Did I say we could depend upon no
better man? Tell her, to-night, what you know of her danger as
involving her child and her father. Dwell upon that, for she would
lay her own fair head beside her husband's cheerfully." He faltered
for an instant ; then went on as before. " For the sake of her child
and her father, press upon her the necessity of leaving Paris, with
them and you, at that hour. Tell her that it was her husband's last
arrangement. Tell her that more depends upon it than she dare
believe, or hope. You think that her father, even in this sad state,
will submit himself to her ; do you not ? "

" I am sure of it."

" I thought so. Quietly and steadily have all these arrangements
made in the court-yard here, even to the taking of your own seat in
the carriage. The moment I come to you, take me in, and drive
away."

600 A Tale of Two Cities.

" I understand tliat I wait for you under all circumstances ? "

" You have my certificate in your hand with the rest, you know,
and will reserve my place. Wait for nothing but to have my place
occupied, and then for England ! "

'■ Why, then," said Mr. Lorry, grasping his eager but so firm and
steady hand, " it does not all depend on one old man, but I shall have
a young and ardent man at my side."

" By the help of Heaven you shall ! Promise me solemnly that
nothing will influence you to alter the course on which we now stand
pledged to one another,"

" Nothing, Carton."

" Kemember these words to-morrow : change the course, or delay
in it — for any reason — and no life can possibly be saved, and many
lives must inevitably bo sacrificed."

" I will remember them. I hope to do my part faithfully."

" And I hope to do mine. Now, good-bye ! "

Though he said it with a grave smile of earnestness, and though he
even put the old man's hand to his lips, he did not part from him
then. He helped him so far to arouse the rocking figure before the
dying embers, as to get a cloak and hat put upon it, and to tempt it forth
to find where the bench and work were hidden that it still meaningly
besought to have. He walked on the other side of it and protected it
to the court-yard of the house where the afflicted heart — so happy in
the memorable time when he had revealed his own desolate heart to it
■ — outwatched the awful night. He entered the court-yard and
remained there for a few moments alone, looking up at the light in
the window of her room. Before he went away, he breathed a blessing
towards it and a Farewell.

CHAPTEE XIII.

FIFTY-TWO.

In the black prison of the Conciergerie, the doomed of the day awaited
their fate. They were in number as the weeks of the year. Fifty-
two were to roll that afternoon on the life-tide of the city to the
boundless everlasting sea. Before their cells were quit of them, new
occupants were appointed ; before their blood ran into the blood
spilled yesterday, the blood that was to mingle with theirs to-morrow
was already set apart.

Two score and twelve were told off. From the farmer-general of
seventy, whose riches could not buy his life, to the seamstress of
twenty, whose poverty and obscurity could not save her. Physical
diseases, engendered in the vices and neglects of men, will seize on

Barney prepares to die. 6oi

victims of all degrees ; and -the frightful moral disorder, bom of un"
speakable suflfering, intolerable oppression, and heartless indiflference,
5jnote equally without distinction.

Charles Darnay, alone in a cell, had sustained himself with no
flattering delusion since he came to it from the Tribunal. In eycry
line of the narrative he had heard, he had heard his condemnation.
He had fully comprehended that no personal influence could possibly
save him, that ho was virtually sentenced by the millions, and that
nnits could avail him nothing.

Nevertheless, it was not easy, with the face of his beloved wife fresh
before him, to compose his mind to what it must bear. His hold on
life was strong, and it was very, very hard, to loosen ; by gradual
efforts and degrees unclosed a little here, it clenched the tighter there ;
and when he brought his strength to bear on that hand and it yielded,
this was closed again. There was a hurry, too, in all his thoughts, a
turbulent and heated working of his heart, that contended against
resignation. If, for a moment, he did feel resigned, then his wife and
child who had to live after him, seemed to protest and to make it a
selfish thing.

But, all this was at first. Before long, the consideration that there
was no disgi'ace in the fate he must meet, and that numbers went the
same road wrongfully, and trod it firmly every day, sprang up to
stimulate him. Next followed the thought that much of the future
peace of mind enjoyable by the dear ones, depended on his quiet
fortitude. So, by degi-ees he calmed into the better state, when he
could raise his thoughts much higher, and draw comfort down.

Before it had set in dark on the night of his condemnation, he had
travelled thus far on his last way. Being allowed to purchase the
means of writing, and a light, he sat down to wr'.to until such time as
the prison lamps shoTtld be extinguished.

He wrote a long letter to Lucie, showing her that he had known
nothing of her father's imprisonment, until he had heard of it from
herself, and that he had been as ignorant as she of his father's and
tincle's responsibility for that misery, until the paper had been read.
He had already explained to her that his concealment from herself of
the name he had relinquished, was the one condition — fully intelligible
now — that her father had attached to their betrothal, and was the one
promise he had still exacted on the morning of their marriage. He
entreated her, for her father's sake, never to seek to know whether her
father had become oblivious of the existence of the paper, or had had
it recalled to him (for the moment, or for good), by the story of the
Tower, on that old Sunday under the dear old plane-tree in the
garden. If he had preserved any definite remembrance of it, there
could be no doubt that he had supposed it destroyed with the Bastille,
when he had found no mention of it among the relics of prisoners
which the populace had discovered there, and which had been described
to all the world. He besought her — though he added that he knew

6o2 A Tale of Two Cities.

it was needless — to console her father, by impressing him through
every tender means she could think of, with the truth that he had
done nothing for which he could justly reproach himseK, but had
uniformly forgotten himself for their joint sakes. Next to her pre-
servation of his own last grateful love and blessing, and her over-
coming of her sorrow, to devote herself to their dear child, he adjured
her, as they would meet in Heaven, to comfort her father.

To her father himself, ho wrote in the same strain ; but, he told
her father that he expressly confided his wife and child to his care.
And he told him this, very strongly, with tlie hope of rousing him
from any despondency or dangerous retrospect towards which he fore-
saw he might be tending.

To Mr. Lorry, he commended them all, and explained his worldly
affairs. That done, with many added sentences of grateful friendship
and warm attachment, all was done. He never thought of Carton.
His mind was so full of the others, that he never once thought of
him.

He had time to finish these letters before the lights were put out.
When he lay down on his straw bed, he thought he had done with
this world.

But, it beckoned him back in his sleep, and showed itself in shining
forms. Free and happy, back in the old house in Soho (though it had
nothing in it like the real house), unaccountably released and light of
heart, he was with Lucie again, and she told him it was all a dream,
and he had never gone away. A pause of forgetfulness, and then he
had even suffered, and had come back to her, dead and at peace, and
yet there was no difference in him. Another pause of oblivion, and he
awoke in the sombre morning, unconscious where he was or what had
happened, until it flashed upon his mind, " this is the day of my
death ! "

Thus, had he come through the hours, to the day when the fifty-two
heads were to fall. And now, while he was composed, and hoped that
he could meet the end with quiet heroism, a new action began in his
waking thoughts, which was very difficult to master.

He had never seen the instrument that was to terminate his life.
How high it was from the ground, how many steps it had, where he
would be stood, how he would be touched, whether the touching hands
would be dyed red, which way his face would be turned, whether he
would be the first, or might be the last : these and many similar
questions, in no wise directed by his will, obtruded themselves over
and over again, countless times. Neither were they connected with
fear : he was conscious of no fear. Rather, they originated in a strange
besetting desire to know what to do when the time came ; a desire
gigantically disproportionate to the few swift moments to which it
referred; a wondering that was more like the wondering of some
other spirit within his, than his own.

The hours went on as ho walked to and fro, and the clocks struck

An Unexpected Visitor. 603

the numbers he would never hear again. Nine gone for over, ten
gone for ever, eleven gone for ever, twelve coming on to pass nway.
After a hard contest with that eccentric action of thought which had
last perplexed him, he had got the bettor of it. He walked up and
down, softly repeating their names to himself. The worst of the
strife was over. He could walk up and down, free from distracting
fancies, praying for himself and for them.

Twelve gone for ever.

Ho had been apprised that the final hour was Three, and he knew
he would be summoned some time earlier, inasmuch as the tumbrils
jolted heavily and slowly through the streets. Therefore, he resolved
to keep Two before his mind, as the hour, and so to strengthen him-
self in the interval that he might be able, after that time, to strengthen
others.

Walking regularly to and fro with his arms folded on his breast, a
very diflferent man from the prisoner, who had walked to and fro at
La l''orce, he heard One struck away from him, without surprise. The
hour had measured like most other hours. Devoutly thankful to
Heaven for his recovered self-possession, he thought, " There is but
another now," and turned to walk again.

Footsteps in the stone passage outside the door. He stopped.

The key was put in the lock, and turned. Before the door was
opened, or as it opened, a man said in a low voice, in English : " He
has never seen me here; I have kept out of his way. Go you in
alone ; I wait near. Lose no time ! "

The door was quickly opened and closed, and there stood before
him face to face, quiet, intent upon him, with the light of a smile on
his features, and a cautionary finger on his lip, Sydney Carton.

There was something so bright and remarkable in his look, that,
for the first moment, the prisoner misdoubted him to be an apparition
of his own imagining. But, he spoke, and it was his voice ; he took
the prisoner's hand, and it was his i-eal grasp.

" Of all the people upon earth, you least expected to see me ? " he
said.

" I could not believe it to be you. I can scarcely believe it now.
You are not" — the apprehension came suddenly into his mind — "a
prisoner ? "

"No. I am accidentally possessed of a power over one of the
keepers here, and in virtue of it I stand before you. I come from her
— your wife, dear Damay."

The prisoner wrung his hand.

" I bring you a request from her."

"What is it?"

" A most earnest, pressing, and emphatic entreaty, addressed to yon
in the most pathetic tones of the voice so dear to you, that you well
remember."

The prisoner turned his face partly aside.

604 A Tate of Two Cities.

" You have no time to ask me why I bring it, or what it means ; I
have no time to tell yon. You must comply with it — take off those
boots you wear, and draw on these of mine."

There was a chair against the wall of the cell, behind the prisoner.
Carton, pressing forward, had already, with the speed of lightning,
got him down into it, and stood over him, barefoot.

" Draw on these boots of mine. Put your hands to them ; put your
will to them. Quick ! "

'■'• Carton, there is no escaping from this place ; it never can be
done. You will only die with me. It is madness."

" It would be madness if I asked you to escape ; but do I ? When
I ask you to pass out at that door, tell me it is madness and remain
here. Change that cravat for this of mine, that coat for this of mine.
While you do it, let me take this ribbon from your hair, and shake
out your hair like this of mine ! "

With wonderful quickness, and with a strength both of will and
action, that appeared quite supernatural, he forced all these changes
upon him. The prisoner was like a young child in his hands.

" Carton ! Dear Carton ! It is madness. It cannot be accom-
plished, it never can be done, it has been attempted, and has always
failed. I implore you not to add your death to the bitterness of
mine."

" Do I ask you, my dear Darnay, to pass the door ? When I ask
that, refuse. There are pen and ink and paper on this table. Is your
hand steady enough to write ? "

" It was when you came in."

" Steady it again, and write what I shall dictate. Quick, friend,
quick ! "

Pressing his hand to his bewildered head, Damay sat down at the
table. Carton, with his right hand in his breast, stood close beside
Mm.

" Write exactly as I speak."

" To whom do I address it ? "

" To no one." Carton still had his hand in his breast.

"Do I date it?"

" No."

The prisoner looked up, at each question. Carton, standing over
him with his hand in his breast, looked down.

" ' If you remember,' " said Carton, dictating, " * the words that passed
between us, long ago, you will readily comprehend this when you see
it. You do remember them, I know. It is not in your nature to
forget them.' "

He was di-awing his hand from his breast ; the prisoner chancing
to look up in his hurried wonder as he wrote, the hand stopped,
closing upon something,

" Have you written ' forget them ' ? " Carton asked.

" I have. Is that a weapon in your hand ? "

Sydney Carton dictates a Letter. 605

" No ; I am not armed."

" What is it in your hand ? "

" You shall know directly. Write on ; there are but a few words
more." He dictated again. " ' I am thankful that the time has
come, when I can prove them. That I do so is no subject for regret
or grief.' " As he said these words with his eyes fixed on the writer,
his hand slowly and softly moved down close to the writer's face.

The pen dropped from Darnay's fingers on the table, and he looked
about him vacantly.

" What vapour is that ? " he asked.

"Vapour?"

" Something that crossed me ? "

" I am conscious of nothing ; there can be nothing here. Take up
the pen and finish. Hurry, hurry ! "

As if his memory were impaired, or his faculties disordered, the
prisoner made an efibrt to rally his attention. As he looked at Carton
with clouded eyes and with an altered manner of breathing. Carton —
his hand again in his breast — looked steadily at him.

" Hurry, hurry ! "

Tiie prisoner bent over the paper, once more. '

" ' If it had been otherwise ; ' " Carton's hand was again watchfully
and softly stealing down ; " ' I never should have used the longer
opportunity. If it had been otherwise ; ' " the hand was at the
prisoner's face ; " ' I should but have had so much the more to answer

for. If it had been otherwise ' " Carton looked at the pen and

saw it was trailing oflf into unintelligible signs.

Carton's hand moved back to his breast no more. The prisoner
sprang up with a reproachful look, but Carton's hand was close and
firm at his nostrils, and Carton's left arm caught him round the waist.
For a few seconds he faintly struggled with the man who had come
to lay down his life for him ; but, within a minute or so, he was
stretched insensible on the ground.

Quickly, but with hands as true to the purpose as his heart was,
Carton dressed himself in the clothes the prisoner had laid aside,
combed back his hair, and tied it with the ribbon the prisoner had
worn. Then, he softly called, " Enter there ! Come in ! " and the Spy
presented himself.

" You see ? " said Carton, looking up, as he kneeled on one knee
beside the insensible figure, putting the paper in the breast : " is your
hazard very great ? "

" Mr. Carton," the Spy answered, with a timid snap of his fingers,
" my hazard is not that, in the thick of business here, if you are true
to the whole of your bargain."

" Don't fear me. I will be true to the death."

" You must be, Mr. Carton, if the tale of fifty-two is to be right
Being made right by you in that dress, I shall have no fear."

" Have no fear ! I shall soon be out of the way of harming you.

6o6 A Tate of Txvo Cities

and the rest will soon be far from here, please God ! Now, get assist-
ance and take me to the coach."

" You ? " said the Spy nervously.

" Him, man, v/ith whom I have exchanged. You go out at the gate
by which you brought me in ? "

« Of course."

" I was weak and faint when you brought me in, and I am fainter
now you take me out. The parting interviev/ has overpowered me.
Such a thing has happened here, often, and too often. Your life is
in your own hands. Quick ! Call assistance ! "

" You swear not to betray me ? " said the trembling Spy, as he
paused for a last moment.

" Man, man ! " returned Carton, stamping his foot ; " have I swom
by no solemn vow already, to go through with this, that you waste
the precious moments now ? Take him yourself to the court-yard you
know of, place him yourself in the carriage, show him yourself to Mr.
Lorry, tell him yourself to give him no restorative but air, and to
remember my words of last night, and his promise of last night, and
drive away ! "

The Spy withdrew, and Carton seated himself at the table, resting
his forehead on his hands. The Spy returned immediately, with two
men.

" Hovf, then ? " said one of them, contemplating the fallen figare.
" So afflicted to find that his friend has drawn a prize in the lottery
of Sainte Guillotine ? "

" A good patriot," said the other, " could hardly have been more
afflicted if the Aristocrat had drawn a blank."

They raised the unconscious figure, placed it on a litter they had
brought to the door, and bent to carry it away.

" The time is short, Evremonde," said the Spy, in a warning voice.

" I know it well," answered Carton. " Be careful of my fi-iend, I
entreat you, and leave me."

"Come, then, my children," said Barsad. "Lift him, and come
away ! "

The door closed, and Carton was left alone. Straining his powers
of listening to the utmost, he listened for any sound that might denote
suspicion or alarm. There was none. Keys turned, doors clashed,
footsteps passed along distant passages : no cry was raised, or hurry
made, that seemed imusual. Breathing more freely in a little while,
he sat down at the table, and listened again until the clock struck
Two.

Sounds that he was not afraid of, for he divined their meaning, then
began to be audible. Several doors were opened in succession, aud
finally his own. A gaoler, with a list in his hand, looked in, merely
saying, " Follow me, Evremonde ! " and he followed into a largo dark
room, at a distance. It was a dark winter day, and what with the
shadows within, and what with the shadows without, ho coxild but

On the List for the Scaffold. 607

dimly discern the others who were brought there to have their arms
bonnd. Some were standing; some seated. Some were lamenting,
and in restless motion ; but, these were few. The great majority
were silent and still, looking fixedly at the ground.

As he stood by the wall in a dim comer, while some of the fifty-
two were brought in after him, one man stopped in passing, to embrace
him, as having a knowledge of him. It thrilled him with. a great
dread of discovery ; but the man went on. A very few moments after
that, a young woman, with a slight girlish form, a sweet spare face in
which there was no vestige of colour, and large widely opened patient
eyes, rose from the seat where he had observed her sitting, and came
to speak to him.

" Citizen Evremonde," she said, touching him with her cold hand.
" I am a poor little seamstress, who was with yon in La Force."

Ho murmured for answer : " True. I forget what you were
accused of? "

" Plots. Though the just Heaven knows I am innocent of any. Is
it likely? Who would think of plotting with a poor little weak
creature like me ? "

The forlorn smile with which she said it, so touched him, that tears
started from his eyes.

"I am not afraid to die, Citizen Evremonde, but I have done
nothing. I am not unwilling to die, if the Republic which is to do so
much good to us poor, will profit by my death ; but I do not know
how that can be. Citizen Evremonde. Such a poor weak little
creature ! "

As the last thing on earth that his heart was to warm and soften to,
it warmed and softened to this pitiable girl.

" I heard you were released, Citizen Evi'emonde. I hoped it was
true?"

" It was. But, I was again taken and condemned."

" If I may ride with you, Citizen Evremonde, will you let mo hold
your hand ? I am not afraid, but I am little and weak, and it will
give mo more courage."

As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sudden doubt
in them, and then astonishment. He pressed the work-worn, hunger-
worn young fingers, and touched his lips.

" Are you dying for him ? " she whispered.

" And his wife and child. Hush ! Yes."

" O you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger ? "

" Hush ! Yes, my poor sister ; to the lust."

The same shadows that are falling on the prison, are falling, in
that same hour of the early afternoon, on the Barrier with the crowd
about it, when a coach going out of Paris drives up to be examined.

" Who goes here ? Whom have we within ? Papers I "

The papers are handed out, and read.

6o8 A Tale of Two Cities.

" Alexandre Manette. Physician. French. Which is he ? "

This is he ; this helpless, inarticulately mui'muring, wandering old
man pointed out.

"Apparently the Citizen-Doctor is not in his right mind? The
Revolution-fever will have been too much for him ?

Greatly too much for him.

" Hah ! Many suflfer with it. Lucie. His daughter. French.
Which is she ? "

This is she.

" Apparently it must be. Lucie, the wife of Evremonde ; is it not ? *

It is.

" Hah ! Evremonde has an assignation elsewhere. Lucie, her child.
English. This is she ? "

She and no other.

" Kiss me, child of Evremonde. Now, thou hast kissed a good
Republican ; something new in thy family ; remember it ! Sydney
Carton. Advocate. English. Which is he ? "

He lies here, in this comer of the carriage. He, too, is pointed out.

" Apparently the English advocate is in a swoon ? "

It is hoped he will recover in the fresher air. It is represented
that he is not in strong health, and has separated sadly from a friend
who is under the displeasure of the Republic.

" Is that all ? It is not a great deal, that ! Many are under the
displeasure of the Republic, and must look out at the little window.
Jarvis Lorry. Banker. English. Which is he ? "

" I am he. Necessarily, being the last."

It is Jarvis Lorry who has replied to all the previous questions.
It is Jarvis Lorry who has alighted and stands with his hand on the
coach door, replying to a group of officials. They leisurely walk
round the carriage and leisurely mount the box, to look at what little
luggage it carries on the roof; the country-people hanging about,
press nearer to the coach doors and greedily stare in ; a little child,
carried by its mother, has its short arm held out for it, that it may
touch the wife of an aristocrat who has gone to the Guillotine.

" Behold your papers, Jarvis Lorry, countersigned."

" One can depart, citizen ? "

" One can depart. Forward, my postilions ! A good journey ! "

" I salute you, citizens. — And the first danger passed ! "

"These are again the words of Jarvis Lorry, as he clasps his hands,
and looks upward. There is terror in the carriage, there is weeping,
there is the heavy breathing of the insensible traveller.

" Are we not going too slowly ? Can they not be induced to go
faster ? " asks Lucie, clinging to the old man.

" It would seem like flight, my darling. I must not urge them too
much ; it would rouse suspicion."

*'■ Look back, look back, and see if we are pursued ! "

" The road is clear^ my dearest. So far, we are not pursued."

Sydney Carton has helped her. 609

Houses in twos and threes pass by us, solitary farms, ruinous build-
ings, dye-works, tanneries, and the like, open country, avenues of
leafless trees. The hard uneven pavement is under us, the soft deep
mud is on either side. Sometimes, we strike into the skirting mud, to
avoid the stones that clatter us and shake us ; sometimes we stick in
ruts and sloughs there. The agony of our impatience is then so great,
that in our wild alann and hurry we are for getting out and running
— hiding — doing anything but stopping.

Out of the open country, in again among ruinous buildings, solitary
farms, dye-works, tanneries, and the like, cottages in twos and threes,
avenues of leafless trees. Have these men deceived us, and taken us
back by another road ? Is not this the same place twice over ? Thank
Heaven, no. A village. Look back, look back, and see if we are
pursued ! Hush ! the posting-house.

Leisurely, our four horses are taken out ; leisurely, the coach stands
in the little street, bereft of horses, and with no likelihood upon it of
ever moving again ; leisurely, the new horses come into visible
existence, one by one ; leisurely, the new postilions follow, sucking
and plaiting the lashes of their whips; leisurely, the old postilions
count their money, make wrong additions, and arrive at dissatisfied
results. All the time, our overfraught hearts are beating at a rate
that would far outstrip the fastest gallop of the fastest horses ever
foaled.

At length the new postilions are in their saddles, and the old are
left behind. We are through the village, up the hill, and down the
hill, and on the low watery grounds. Suddenly, the postilions ex-
change speech with animated gesticulation, and the horses ai*e pulled
up, almost on their haunches. We are pursued ?

" Ho ! Within the carriage there. Speak then ! "

" What is it ? " asks Mr. Lorry, looking out at window.

" How many did they say ? "

" I do not understand you."

" — At the last post. How many to the Guillotine to-day ? "

" Fifty-two."

" I said so ! A brave number ! My fellow-citizen here would
have it forty-two ; ten more heads are worth having. The Guillotine
goes handsomely. I love it. Hi forward. Whoop ! "

The night comes on dark. He moves more ; he is beginning to
revive, and to speak intelligibly ; he thinks they are still together ;
he asks him, by his name, what he has in his hand. O pity us, kind
Heaven, and help us ! Look out, look out, and see if we are pursued.

The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and
the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit
of us ; but, so far, we are pursued by nothing else.

2b

CHAPTER XIV.

THE KNITTING DOKE.

In that same juncture of time when the Fifty-Two awaited their fate,
Madame Defarge held darkly ominous council with The Vengeance
and Jacques Three of the Revolutionary Jury. Not in the wine-shop
did Madame Defarge confer with these ministers, but in the shed of
the wood-sawyer, erst a mender of roads. The sawyer himself did
not participate in the conference, but abided at a little distance, like
an outer satellite who was not to speak until required, or to offer an
opinion until invited.

" But our Defarge," said Jacques Three, " is undoubtedly a good
Republican ? Eh ? "

" There is no better," the voluble Vengeance protested in her shrill
notes, " in France."

" Peace, little Vengeance," said Madame Defarge, laying her hand
with a slight frown on her lieutenant's lips, " hear me speak. My
husband, fellow-citizen, is a good Republican and a bold man; he has
deserved well of the Republic, and possesses its confidence. But my
husband has his weaknesses, and he is so weak as to relent towards
this Doctor."

" It is a great pity," croaked Jacques Three, dubiously shaking his
head, with his cruel fingers at his hungry mouth ; " it is not quite
like a good citizen ; it is a thing to regret."

" See you," said madame, " I care nothing for this Doctor, I. He
may wear his head or lose it, for any interest I have in him ; it is all
one to me. But, the Evremonde people are to be exterminated, and
the wife and child must follow the husband and father."

" She has a fine head for it," croaked Jacques Three. " I have seen
blue eyes and golden hair there, and they looked charming when
Samson held them up." Ogre that he was, he spoke like an epicure.

Madame Defarge cast down her eyes, and reflected a little.

" The child also," observed Jacques Three, with a meditative
enjoyment of his words, " has golden hair and blue eyes. And we
seldom have a child there. It is a pretty sight ! "

" In a word," said Madame Defarge, coming out of her short
abstraction, " I cannot trust my husband in this matter. Not only do
I feel, since last night, that I dare not confide to him the details of
my projects ; but also I feel that if I delay, there is danger of his
giving warning, and then they might escape."

" That must never be," croaked Jacques Three ; " no one must
escape. We have not half enough as it is. We ought to have six
score a day."

" In a word," Madame Defarge went on, " my husband has not my

More Heads wanted, 6il

reason for pursning this family to annihilation, and I have not his
reason for regarding this Doctor with any sensibility. I must act for
myself, therefore. Come hither, little citizen."

The wood-sawyer, who held her iu the respect, and himself in the
submission, of mortal fear, advanced with his hand to his rod cap.

" Touching those signals, little citizen," said Madame Defarge,
sternly, " that she made to the prisoners ; you are ready to bear
witness to them this very day ? "

" Ay, ay, why not ! " cried the sawyer. " Eveiy day, in all weathers,
from two to four, always signalling, sometimes with the little one,
sometimes without. I know what I know. I have seen with my
eyes."

He made all manner of gestures while he spoke, as if in incidental
imitation of some few of the great diversity of signals that he had
never seen.

" Clearly plots," said Jacques Three. " Transparently ! "

"There is no doubt of the Jury?" inquired Madame Defarge,
letting her eyes turn to him with a gloomy smile.

" Rely upon the patriotic Jury, dear citiaeness. I answer for my
fellow-Jurymen.''

" Now, let me see," said Madame Defarge, pondering again. " Yet
once more ! Can I spare this Doctor to my husband ? I have no
feeling either way. Can I spare him ? "

" He would count as one head," observed Jacques Three, in a low
voice. " We really have not heads enough ; it would be a pity, I
think."

"He was signalling with her when I saw her," argued Madame
Defarge ; " I cannot speak of one without the other ; and I must not
be silent, and trust the case wholly to him, this little citizen here.
For, I am not a bad witness."

The Vengeance and Jacques Three vied with each other in their
fervent protestations that she was the most admirable and marvellous
of witnesses. The little citizen, not to be outdone, declared her to be
a celestial witness.

" He must take his chance," said Madame Defarge. '• No, I cannot
spare him ! You are engaged at three o'clock ; yon are going to see
the batch of to-day executed. — You ? "

The question was addressed to the wood-sawyer, who hurriedly
replied in the affirmative : seizing the occasion to add that he was the
most ardent of Republicans, and that he would be in effect the most
■desolate of Republicans, if anything prevented him from enjoying the
pleasure of smoking his afternoon pipe in the contemplation of the
droll national barber. He was so very demonstrative herein, that he
might have been suspected (perhaps was, by the dark eyes that looked
<;ontemptuou8ly at him out of Madame Defargo's head) of having his
small individual fears for his own personal safety, every hour iu
the day.

6l2 A Tale of Tiuo Cities.

" I," said madame, " am equally engaged at the same place. After
it is over — say at eight to-night — come yon to me, in Saint Autoine,
and we will give information against these j^eople at my Section."

The wood-sawyer said he would be proud and flattered to attend
the citizeness. The citizeness looking at him, he became embarrassed,
evaded her glance as a small dog would have done, retreated among
his wood, and hid his confusion over the handle of his saw.

Madame Defarge beckoned the Juryman and The Vengeance a little
nearer to the door, and there expounded her farther views to them
thus:

" She will now be at home, awaiting the moment of his death. She
will be mourning and grieving. She will be in a state of mind to
impeach the justice of the Republic. She will be full of sympathy
with its enemies. I will go to her."

" What an admirable woman ; what an adorable woman 1 " ex-
claimed Jacques Three, rapturously. " Ah, my cherished ! " cried
The Vengeance ; and embraced her.

" Take you my knitting," said Madame Defarge, placing it in her
lieutenant's hands, " and have it ready for me in my usual seat. Keep
me my usual chair. Go you there, straight, for there will probably
be a greater concourse than usual, to-day."

" I Avillingly obey the orders of my Chief," said The Vengeance with
alacrity, and kissing her cheek. " You will not be late ? "

" I shall be there before the commencement."

" And before the tumbrils arrive. Be sure you are there, my soul,"
said The Vengeance, calling after her, for she had already turned into
the street, " before the tumbrils arrive ! "

Madame Defarge slightly waved her hand, to imply that she heard,
and might be relied upon to arrive in good time, and so went through
the mud, and round the corner of the prison-wall. The Vengeance
and the Juryman, looking after her as she walked away, were highly
appreciative of her fine figure, and her superb moral endowments.

There were many women at that time, upon whom the time laid a
dreadfully disfiguring hand ; but, there was not one among them more
to be dreaded than this ruthless woman, now taking her way along
the streets. Of a strong and fearless character, of shrewd sense and
readiness, of great determination, of that kind of beauty which not
only seems to impart to its possessor firmness and animosity, but to
strike into others an instinctive recognition of those qualities ; the
troubled time would have heaved her up, under any circumstances.
But, imbued from her childhood with a brooding sense of wrong, and
an inveterate hatred of a class, opportunity had developed her into
a tigress. She was absolutely without pity. If she had ever had the
virtue in her, it had quite gone out of her.

It was nothing to her, that an innocent man was to die for the sins
of his forefathers ; she saw, not him, but them. It was nothing to
her, that his wife was to be made a widow and his daughter an orphan ;

Madame Defarge on a Reconnoitring Expedition. 613

that was insufficient piinisbmeut, because they were her natural
enemies and her prey, and as such had no right to live. To appeal
to her, was made hopeless by her having no sense of pity, even for
herself. If she had been laid low in the streets, in any of the many
encounters in which she had engaged, she would not have pitied
herself ; nor, if she had been ordered to the axe to-morrow, would she
have gone to it with any softer feeling than a fierce desire to change
places with the man who sent her there.

Such a heart Madame Defarge carried under her rough robe.
Carelessly worn, it was a becoming robe enough, in a certain weird
way, and her dark hair looked rich under her coarse red cap. Lying
hidden in her bosom, was a loaded pistol. Lying hidden at lier
waist, was a sharpened dagger. Thus accoutred, and walking with the
confident tread of such a character, and with the supple freedom of
a woman who had liabitually walked in her girlhood, bare-foot and
bare-legged, on the brown sea-sand, Madame Defarge took her way
along the streets.

Now, when the journey of the travelling coach, at that vei*y moment
waiting for the completion of its load, had been planned out last night,
the difficulty of taking Miss Press in it had much engaged Mr. Lorry's
attention. It was not merely desirable to avoid overloading the coach,
but it was of the highest importance that the time occupied in ex-
amining it and its passengers, should be reduced to the utmost ; since
their escape might depend on the saving of only a few seconds here
and there. Finally, he had proposed, after anxious consideration,
that Miss Press and Jerry, who were at liberty to leave the city,
should leave it at three o'clock in the lightest-wheeled conveyance
known to that period. Unencuml)ered with luggage, they would soon
overtake the coach, and, passing it and preceding it on the road, would
order its horses in advance, and greatly facilitate its progress during
the precious hours of the night, when delay was the most to be
dreaded.

Seeing in this arrangement the hope of rendering real service in
that pressing emergency, Miss Pross hailed it with joy. She and
Jerry had beheld the coach start, had known who it was that Solomon
brought, had passed some ten minutes in tortures of suspense, and
were now concluding their arrangements to follow the coach, even as
Madame Defarge, taking her way through the streets, now drew
nearer and nearer to the else-deserted lodging in which they held
their consultation.

"Now what do you think, Mr. Cruncher," said Miss Pross, whose
agitation was so great that she could hardly speak, or stand, or move,
or live : " what do you think of our not starting from this court-yard ?
Another carriage having already gone from here to-day, it might
awaken suspicion."

" My opinion, miss," retamed Mr. Cruncher, " is as you're right
Likewise wot I'll stand by you, right or wrong."

6i4 -^ Tale of Tivo Cities.

*' I am so distracted with fear and hope for our pi'ecious creatures,"
said Miss Pross, wildly crying, " that I am incapable of forming any
plan. Are you capable of forming any plan, my dear good Mr.
Cruncher ? "

" Kespectin' a future spear o' life, misa," returned Mr. Cruncher,
" I hope so. Respectin' any present use o' this here blessed old head
o' mine, I think not. Would you do me the favour, miss, to take
notice o' two promises and wows wot it is my wishes fur to record in
this here crisis ? "

" Oh, for gracious sake ! " cried Miss Pross, still wildly crying,
" record them at once, and get tlicm out of the way, like an excellent
man."

"First," said Mr, Cruncher, who was all in a tremble, and who
spoke with an ashy and solemn visage, " them poor things well out
o' this, never no more will I do it, never no more ! "

" I am quite sure, Mr. Crunchei'," returned Miss Pross, " that you
never will do it again, wliatever it is, and I beg you not to think it
necessary to mention more particularly what it is."

" No, miss," returued Jerry, " it shall not be named to you.
Second : them poor things well out o' this, and never no more will
I interfere with Mrs. Cruncher's flopping, never no more ! "

"Whatever housekeeping arrangemeut that may be," said Miss
Pross, striving to dry her eyes and compose herself, " I have no doubt
it is best that Mrs. Cruncher should have it entirely under her own
superintendence. — O my poor darlings ! "

" I go so far as to say, miss, morehover," proceeded Mr. Cruncher,
with a most alarming tendency to hold forth as from a pulpit — " and
let my words be took down and took to Mrs. Cruncher through your-
self—that wot my opinions respectin' flopping has undergone a change,
and that wot I only hope with all my heart as Mrs. Cruncher may be
a flopping at the present time."

" There, there, there ! I hope she is, my dear man," cried the
distracted Miss Pross, " and I hope she finds it answering her
expectations."

" Forbid it," proceeded Mr. Cruncher, with additional solemnity,
additional slowness, and additional tendency to hold forth and hold
out, " as anything wot I have ever said or done should be wisited on
my earnest wishes for them poor creeturs now! Forbid it as we
shouldn't all flop (if it was anyways conwenient) to get 'em out o' this
here dismal risk ! Forbid it, miss ! Wot I say, for — bid it ! " This
was Mr. Cruncher's conclusion after a protracted but vain endeavour
to find a better one.

And still Madame Defarge, pursuing her way along the streets,
came nearer and nearer.

" If we ever get back to our native land," said Miss Pross, " you
may rely upon my telling Mrs. Cruncher as much as I may be able to
remember and understand of what you have so impressively said ; and

A Precautionary Measure. 615

at all cventg yon may be snre that I shall bear witness to your being
thoroughly in earnest at this dreadful time. Now, pray let us think !
My esteemed Mr. Cruncher, lot us think ! "

Still, Madame Defarge, pursuing her way along the streets, came
nearer and nearer.

" If you were to go before," said Miss Pross, " and stop the vehicle
and horses from coming here, and were to wait somewhere for me ;
wouldn't that be best ? "

Mr. Cruncher thought it might be best.

" Where could you wait for me ? " asked Miss Pross.

Mr. Cruncher was so bewildered that he could think of no locality
but Temple Bar. Alas ! Temple Bar was hundreds of miles away,
and Madame Defarge was drawing very near indeed.

" By the cathedral door," said Miss Pross. " Would it be much out
of the way, to take mo in, near the great cathedral door between the
two towers ? "

" No, miss," answered Mr. Cruncher.

" Then, like the best of men," said Miss Pross, " go to the posting-
house straight, and make that change."

" I am doubtful," said Mr. Cruncher, hesitating and shaking his
head, "about leaving of you, you see. We don't know what may
happen."

" Heaven knows we don't," returned Miss Pross, " but have no fear
for me. Take mo in at the cathedral, at Three o'clock, or as near it
as you can, and I am sure it will be better than our going from here.
I feel certain of it. There ! Bless you, Mr. Cruncher ! Think— not
of me, but of the lives that may depend upon both of us ! "

This exordium, and Miss Press's two hands in quite agonised
entreaty clasping his, decided Mr. Cruncher. With an encouraging
nod or two, he immediately went out to alter the arrangements, and
left her by herself to follow as she had proposed.

The having originated a precaution which was already in course of
execution, was a great relief to Miss Pross. The necessity of com-
posing her appearance so that it should attract no special notice in the
streets, was another relief. She looked at her watch, and it was
twenty minutes past two. She had no time to lose, but must get
ready at once. •

Afraid, in her extreme perturbation, of the loneliness of the deserted
rooms, and of half-imagined faces peeping from behind every open
door in them, Miss Pross got a basin of cold water and began laving
her eyes, which were swollen and red. Haunted by her feverish
apprehensions, she could not bear to have her sight obscured for a
minute at a time by the dripping water, but constantly paused and
looked round to see that there was no one watching her. In one of
those pauses she recoiled and cried out, for she saw a figure standing
in the room.

The basin fell to the ground broken, and the water Jlowed to tho

6i6 A Tale of Two Cities.

feet of Madame Defarge. By strange stem ways, and through much
staining blood, those feet had come to meet that watei*.

Madame Defarge looked coldly at her, and said, " The wife of
Evremonde ; where is she ? "

It flashed upon Miss Pross's mind that the doors were all standing
open, and would suggest the flight. Her first act was to shut them.
There were four in the room, and she shut them all. She then placed
herself before the door of the chamber which Lucie had occupied.

Madame Defarge's dark eyes followed her through this rapid move-
ment, and rested on her when it was finished. Miss Pross had
nothing beautiful about her ; years had not tamed the wildness, or
softened the grimness, of her appearance ; but, she too was a deter-
mined woman in her different way, and she measured Madame Defarge
with her eyes, every inch.

" Yon might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer," said
Miss Pross, in her breathing. " Nevertheless, you shall not get the
better of me. I am an Englishwoman."

Madame Defarge looked at her scornfully, but still with something
of Miss Pross's own perception that they two were at bay. She saw a
tight, hard, wiry woman before her, as Mr. Lorry had seen in the
same figure a woman with a strong hand, in the years gone by. Slie
knew full well that Miss Pross was the family's devoted friend ; Miss
Pross knew fall well that Madame Defarge was the family's malevolent
enemy.

" On my way yonder," said Madame Defarge, with a slight move-
ment of her hand towards the fatal spot, " where they reserve my chair
and my knitting for me, I am come to make my compliments to her
in passing. I wish to see her."

" I know that your intentions are evil," said Miss Pross, " and you
may depend upon it, I'll hold my own against them."

Each spoke in her own language ; neither understood the otlier's
words ; both were very watchful, and intent to deduce fi'om look and
manner, what the unintelligible words meant.

" It will do her no good to keep herself concealed from me at this
moment," said Madame Defarge. '• Good patriots will know what
that means. Let me see her. Go tell her that I wish to see her.
Do you hear ? " *

" If those eyes of yours were bed-winches," returned Miss Pross,
" and I was an English four-poster, they shouldn't loose a splinter of
me. No, you wicked foreign woman ; I am your match."

Madame Defarge was not likely to follow these idiomatic remarks
in detail ; but, slie so far understood them as to perceive that she was
set at naught.

"Woman imbecile and pig-like ! " said Madame Defarge, frowning.
" I take no answer from you. I demand to see her. Either tell her
that I demand to see her, or stand out of the way of the door and let me
go to her ! " This, with an angry explanatory wave of her right arm.

Miss Pross in the Breach. 617

" I little thonght," said Miss Pross, " that I should ever want to
understand your nonsensical language ; but I would give all I have,
except the clothes I wear, to know whether you suspect the truth, or
any part of it."

Neither of them for a single moment released the other's eyes.
Madame Defarge had not moved from the spot where she stood when
Miss Pross first became aware of her ; but, she now advanced one
step.

" I am a Briton," said Miss Pross, " I am desperate. I don't care
an English Twopence for myself. 1 know that the longer I keep you
here, the greater hope there is for my Ladybird. I'll not leave
a handful of that dark hair upon your head, if you lay a finger
on me ! "

Thus Miss Pross, with a shake of her head and a flash of her eyes
between every rapid sentence, and every rapid sentence a whole
breath. Thus Miss Pross, who had never struck a blow in her life.

But, her courage was of that emotional nature that it brought the
irrepressible tears into her eyes. This was a courage that Madame
Defarge so little comprehended as to mistake for weakness. " Ha,
ha ! " she laughed, " you poor wretch ! What are you worth ! I
address myself to that Doctor." Then she raised her voice and
called out, " Citizen Doctor ! Wife of Evremonde ! Child of Evre-
monde ! Any person but this miserable fool, answer the Citizeness
Defarge ! "

Perliaps the foUomng silence, perhaps some latent disclosure in the
expression of Miss Prose's face, perhaps a sudden misgiving apart
from either suggestion, whispered to Madame Defarge that they were
gone. Three of the doors she opened swiftly, and looked in.

" Those rooms are all in disorder, there has been hurried packing,
there are odds and ends upon the ground. There is no one in that
room behind you ! Let me look."

" Never ! " said Miss Pross, who undei-stood the request as perfectly
as Madame Defarge understood the answer.

" If they are not in that room, they are gone, and can be pursued
and brought back," said Madame Defarge to herself.

"As long as you don't know whether they are in that room or
not, you are uncertain what to do," said Miss Pross to herself ;t " and
you shall not know that, if I can prevent your knowing it; and
know that, or not know that, you shall not leave here while I can
hold you."

" I have been in the streets from the first, nothing has stopped me,
I will tear you to pieces, but I will have you from that door," said
Madame Defarge.

" We are alone at the top of a high house in a solitary court-yard,
we are not likely to bo heard, and I pray for bodily strength to keep
you here, while every minute you are here is worth a hundred
thousand guineas to my darling," said Miss Pross.

6i8 A Tale of Two Cities.

Madame Defarge made at tlie door. Miss Pross, on tlie instinct of
the moment, seized her round the waist in both her arms, and held her
tight. It was in vain for Madame Defarge to struggle and to strike ;
Miss Pross, with the vigorous tenacity of love, always so much stronger
than hate, clasped her tight, and even lifted her from the floor in the
struggle that they had. The two hands of Madame Defarge buffeted
and tore her face ; but. Miss Pross, with her head down, held her round
the waist, and clung to her with more than the hold of a drowning
Avoman.

Soon, Madame Defarge's hands ceased to strike, and felt at her
encircled waist. " It is under my arm," said Miss Pross, in smothered
tones, " you shall not draw it. I am stronger than you, I bless
Heaven for it. I'll hold vou till one or other of us faints or
dies ! "

Madame Defarge's hands wore at her bosom. Miss Pross looked
uj), saw what it was, struck at it, struck out a flash and a crash, and
stood alone — ^ blinded with smoke.

All this was in a second. As the smoke cleared, leaving an awful
stillness, it passed out on the air, like the soul of the furious woman
whose body lay lifeless on the ground.

In the first fright and horror of her situation. Miss Pross passed
the body as far from it as she could, and ran down the stairs to call
for friiitless help. Happily, she bethought herself of the consequences
of what she did, in time to check herself and go back. It Avas dreadful
to go in at the door again ; but, she did go in, and even went near it,
to get the bonnet and other things that she must wear. These she
put on, out on the staircase, first shutting and locking the door and
taking away the key. She then sat down on the stairs a few moments
to breathe and to cry, and then got up and hurried away.

By good fortune she had a veil on her bonnet, or she could hardly
have gone along the streets without being stopped. By good fortune,
too, she was naturally so peculiar in appearance as not to show dis-
figurement like any other woman. She needed both advantages, for
the marks of griping fingers were deep in her face, and her hair was
torn, and her dress (hastily composed with unsteady hands) was
clutched and dragged a hundred ways.

In grossing the bridge, she dropped the door key in the river.
Arriving at the cathedral some few minutes before her escort, and
waiting there, she thought, what if the key were already taken in a
net, what if it were identified, what if the door were opened and the
remains discovered, what if she were stopped at the gate, sent to
prison, and charged with murder ! In the midst of these fluttering
thoughts, the escort appeared, took her in, and took her away.

" Is there any noise in the streets ? " she asked him.

" The usual noises," Mr. Cnincher replied ; and looked surprised
by the question and by her aspect.

" I don't hear you," said Miss Pross. " What do you say ? "

Miss Pross in a Queer Condition. 619

It was in vaiu for Mr. Cranclier to repeat what ho Baid ; Miss Press
could not hear him. " So I'll nod my head," thought Mr. Cruncher,
amazed, " at all events she'll see that." And she did.

"' Is there any noise in the streets now ? " asked Miss Pross again,
presently.

Again Mr. Cruncher nodded his head.
' " I don't heai- it."

" Gone deaf in a hour ? " said Mr. Cmncher, ruminating, with bis
mind much disturbed ; " wot's come to her ? "

" I feel," said Miss Pross, " as if there had been a flash and a crash,
and that crash was the last thing I should ever hear in this life."

" Blest if she ain't in a queer condition ! " said Mr. Cruncher, more
and more disturbed. " Wot can she have been a takin', to keep her
courage up ? Hark ! There's the roll of them dreadful carts ! You
can hear that, miss ? "

" I can hear," said Miss Pross, seeing that ho spoke to her, " nothing.
0, my good man, there was first a great crash, and then a great still-
ness, and that stillness seems to bo fixed and unchangeable, never to
be broken any more as long as my life lasts."

" If she don't hear the roll of those dreadful carts, now very nigh
their journey's end," said Mr. Cnincher, glancing over his shoulder,
" it's my opinion that indeed she never will hear anything else in this
world."

And indeed she never did.

CHAPTER XV.

THE FOOTSTEPS DIE OUT FOB EVER.

Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and hai*sh.
Six tumbrils carry the day's wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring
and insatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself,
are fused in the one realisation, Guillotine. And yet there is not in
France, with its ricli variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root,
a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions
more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush
humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will
twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of
i-apacious licence and oppression over again, and it will surely yield
the same fruit according to its kind.

Six tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these back again to
what they were, thou powerful enchanter. Time, and they shall bo
seen to be the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equipages of feudal
nobles, the toilettes of flaring Jezebels, the churches that are not my

620 A Tale of Two Cities.

father's house but dens of thieves, the huts of millions of starving
peasants ! No ; the great magician who majestically works out the
appointed order of the Creator, never reverses his transformations.
" If thou be changed into this shape by the will of God," say the seers
to the enchanted, in the wise Arabian stories, " then remain so ! But,
if thou wear this form through mere passing conjuration, then resume
thy former aspect ! " Changeless and hopeless, the tumbrils roll
along.

As the sombre wheels of the six carts go round, they seem to plough
up a long crooked furrow among the populace in the streets. Ridges
of faces are thrown to this side and to that, and the ploughs go
steadily onward. So used are the regular inhabitants of the houses to
the spectacle, that in many windows there are no people, and in some
the occupation of the hands is not so much as suspended, while the
eyes survey the faces in the tumbrils. Here and there, the inmate
has visitors to see the sight ; then he points his finger, with some-
thing of the complacency of a curator or authorized exponent, to this
cart and to this, and seems to tell who sat here yesterday, and who
there the day before.

Of the riders in the tumbrils, some observe these things, and all
things on their last roadside, with an impassive stare ; others, with a
lingering interest in the ways of life and men. Some, seated with
drooping heads, are sunk in silent despair; again, there are some
so heedful of their looks that they cast upon the multitude such
glances as they have seen in theatres, and in pictures. Several close
their eyes, and thinlc, or try to get their straying thoughts together.
Only one, and he a miserable creature, of a crazed aspect, is so
shattered and made drunk by horror, that he sings, and tries to dance.
Not one of the whole number appeals by look or gesture, to the pity
of the people.

There is a guard of sundry horsemen riding abreast of the tumbrils,
and faces are often turned up to some of them, and they are asked
some question. It would seem to be always the same question, for, it
is always followed by a press of people towards the third cart. The
horsemen abreast of that cart, frequently point out one man in it with
their swords. The leading curiosity is, to know which is he ; he
stands at the back of the tumbril with his head bent down, to converse
with a mere girl who sits on the side of the cart, and holds his hand.
He has no curiosity or care for the scene about him, and always
speaks to the girl. Here and there in the long street of St. Honore,
cries are raised against him. If they move him at all, it is only to a
quiet smile, as he shakes his hair a little more loosely about his face.
He cannot easily touch his face, his arms being bound.

On the steps of a church, awaiting the coming-up of the tumbrils,
stands the Spy and prison-sheep. He looks into the first of them :
not there. He looks into the second : not there. He already asks

At the Foot of Guillotine. 621

himself, " Has he sacrificed mo ? " when his face clears, as he looks
into the third.

" Which is Evremondo ? " says a man behind him.

" That. At the back there."

« With his hand in the girl's ? "

" Yes."

The man cries, " Down, Evremonde I To the Guillotine all
aristocrats I Down, Evremonde ! "

" Hush, hush I " the Spy entreats him, timidly.

" And why not, citizen ? "

"He is going to pay the forfeit: it will be paid in five minutes
more. Let him be at peace."

But the man continuing to exclaim, " Down, Evremonde ! " the face
of Evremonde is for a moment turned towards him. Evremonde then
sees the Spy, and looks attentively at him, and goes his way.

The clocks are on the stroke of three, and the furrow ploughed
among the populace is turning ronnd, to come on into the place of
execntion, and end. The ridges thrown to this side and to that, now
crumble in and cloi:^- behind the last plough as it passes on, for all are
following to the Guillotine. In front of it, seated in chairs, as in a
garden of public diversion, are a number of women, busily knitting.
On one of the foremost chairs, stands The Vengeance, looking about
for her friend.

" Therese ! " she cries, in her shrill tones. " Who has seen her ?
Therese Defarge ! "

" She never missed before," says a knitting-woman of the sisterhood.

"No; nor will she miss now," cries The Vengeance, petulantly.
" Therese."

" Louder," the woman recommends.

Ay ! Louder, Vengeance, much louder, and still she will scarcely
hear thee. Louder yet. Vengeance, with a little oath or so added, and
yet it will hardly bring her. Send other women up and down to seek
her, lingering somewhere; and yet, although the messengers have
done dread deeds, it is questionable whether of their own wills th^
will go far enough to find her !

" Bad Fortune ! " cries The Vengeance, stamping her foot in the
chair, " and here are the tumbrils ! And Evremonde will be despatched
in a wink, and she not here ! See her knitting in my hand, and her
empty chair ready for her. I cry with vexation and disappoint-
ment ! "

As The Vengeance descends from her elevation to do it, the tumbrils
begin to discharge their loads. The ministers of Sainte Guillotine are
robed and ready. Crash ! — A head is held up, and the knitting-women
who scarcely lifted their eyes to look at it a moment ago when it
could think and speak, count One.

The second tumbril empties and moves on; the third comes up.

622 A I ale of Tzvo Cities.

Crash ! — And tlie knitting-women, never faltering or pausing in their
•work, count Two.

The supposed Evrcmondc descends, and the seamstress is lifted out
next after liim. Ho has not relinquished her patient hand in getting
out, but still holds it as ho promised. He gently places her with her
back to the crashing engine that constantly whirrs up and falls, and
she looks into his face and thanks him.

" But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so composed, for I am
naturally a poor little thing, faint of heart ; nor should I have been
able to raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that we might
have hope and comfort here to-day. I think you were sent to me by
Heaven."

" Or you to me," says Sydney Carton. " Keep your eyes upon me,
dear child, and mind no other object."

" I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind nothing
when I let it go, if they are rapid."

" They will be rapid. Fear not ! "

The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they
speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand,
heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so
wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark iiighway, to
repair home together, and to rest in her bosom.

" Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one last ques-
tion ? I am very ignorant, and it troubles me— just a little."

" Tell me what it is."

" I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself, whom
I love very dearly. She is live years younger than I, and she lives in
a farmer's house in the south country. Poverty parted us, and she
knows nothing of my fate — for I cannot write — and if I could, how
should I tell her ! It is better as it is."

" Yes, yes : better as it is."

" What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I
am still thinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which
gives me so much support, is this: — If the Republic really does
good to the poor, and they come to be less hungry, and in all
ways to suffer less, she may live a long time : she may even live to
be old."

" What then, my gentle sister ? "

" Do you think : " the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so much
endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble :
" that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land
where 1 trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered ? "

" It cannot be, my child ; there is no Time there, and no trouble
there."

" You comfoi-t me so much ! I am so ignorant. Am I to kiss you
now ? Is the moment come ? "

Expiation. • 62^

"Yes."

She kisses his lips; ho kisses hers; they solemnly bless each
other. The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it ; nothing
worse than a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She
goes next before him — is gone ; the knitting-women connt Twenty-
Two.

" I am the Eesnrrection and the Life, saith the Lord : he that
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live : and whoso-
ever liveth and believeth in mo shall never die."

The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the
pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it
swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes
away. Twenty-Three.

They said of him, about the city tliat night, that it was the peace-
fullest man's face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked
sublime and prophetic.

One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe — a woman —
had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be
allowed to write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he
had given any utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would
have been these :

" I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the
Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the
destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrament, before
it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a
brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their straggles to be
truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long long years to
come, I sec the evil of this time and of the previous time of which
this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and
wealing out.

" I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful,
prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I
see Her with a child ui)on her bosom, who bears my name. I see her
father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men
in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long
their friend, in ten years' time enriching them with all he has, and
passing tranquilly to his reward.

" I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of
their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weep-
ing for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband,
their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I
know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other's
soul, than I was in the souls of both.

" 1 see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name,
a man ^-inning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I

624 A Tale of Tzvo Cities.

see liim winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by
the liglit of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see
him, foremost of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my
name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place —
then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement —
and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a f\ilteriug
voice.*

" It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done ; it is
a far, far better rest that I go to tlian I have ever known."

THE END.

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